A rocket you want to avoid - Software Engineer Stackline Employee Review

2.0
26 Jul 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- smaller company, so there is a ton of ownership if that's your thing - some great team members. I am very grateful for the advocacy, support, and generosity of certain individuals within the company.

Cons

- non-existing work-life balance. You are expected to work on weekends and late nights. Even if you work for 60-70 hours per week, your performance would be questioned by management - bad code. Seriously. I don't mind having to work through it, but it's not something that happens quickly. Management would question your performance if you don't finish a project by the due date (which is completely up to them). They mostly are not tech people and don't understand that it is hard to deliver when you spend 2 days to understand the logic of the code and unwinding it - engineers are underpaid compared to the rest of Seattle. When I've started interviewing everyone I've talked to pays 15 to 20% more than what I made there - No 401 k, and equities has to be asked for. I was working there almost a year. I have asked for equities during the phone call with the CEO before I joined the company. He said I would get them in 6 months. Never happened. In 11 months I learned that most of my team members got their equities except myself.

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Stackline Response
6y
We appreciate the commitment of all of Stackline's reviewers who have taken the time to share their experience for the benefit of others. We also appreciate the opportunity to respond and share some of the beliefs (and changes!) powering our growth. We're committed to hiring incredible talent that will continue to optimize and innovate in whatever part of Stackline's trajectory they enter. We hope that the current members of our engineering and data science teams feel strongly that their contributions have moved us well past some of the challenges outlined here.

Explore other reviews about Stackline

5.0
3 Feb 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

fun,easy, flexible, great management, great coworkers

Cons

sometimes the work is tedious

2.0
23 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Nice office view with rooftop access - Some free decent snacks and drinks - Some new projects with modern tech stacks and fast learning experience for new grads. - Good insurance coverages.

Cons

- CEO practices are mostly trying to boost short term profitability and margin. Sales and engineering have huge layoffs recently, but not finance department. This could be sign of boosting immediate margin, but the business seems hanging on a tight rope. - Bad engineering practices. bandaging fixes for both legacy apps like Atlas, Beacon, and data pipeline. No plan for proper maintenance, refactor and upgrade of legacy code bases. - Critical crawling is unreliable and susceptible to changes of data provider term of services. - Company culture: Stackline expecting superhuman employees like Tiktok, but pay is far below the industry work effort you are putting into. - Most folks under Engineering and Data Science teams are constantly discussing of interview preparation to attempt escaping the sinking ship.

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