Formlabs reviews about "benefit"

Management is terrible, constant restructuring of teams and commission. People leave and are never replaced. The benefits are terrible (low pay, long hours, garbage health insurance, no 401k match, basically zero holidays, “unlimited PTO” which you can never take). Absolute culture of fear from the top down. Just read some of the responses Formlabs is posting here plus some of the reviews (lmao to the reviewer that says people who just want a high base salary probably aren’t a good fit). All the high reviews by management and team leads while the grunts hate it here.

company can move too fast for its own good and can compromise communication

- high expectations towards employees, targets are often raised - working hours are not flexible - communication and information flow among teams could be improved - no year-end bonus

Terrible work culture in the last 2 years. Will respect European work ethic most of the times, because they have to, but will encourage and will provide opportunities for people who work unpaid overtime, and answer messages off the clock. Authoritarian management composed of oportunists who de-value professionalism, and will expect a constant ego reinforcement from employees. Management felt the need to constantly remind everyone "who is the boss", so the mood in our office was usually bad. Regardless of your contribution and position, you will be discarded if you don't hit it off with management. Anti-environmentalist attitude from management, ervironmental impact and toxicity is a subject the company avoids at all costs. Don't work here if you are environmentally conscious. HR will contain you if you talk about sustainability, and shift the blame to you (employee) to do something about sustainibility (BP practice). HR will report on you, and flag you if you have any complaint of management - even if all of your coworkers feel the same. HR seemed to be consistently undermining professional developement of certain departments and employees aftrer a certain point to keep their salaries just below market average. American company that partially runs on European professionals, but somehow still manages to look down on Europeans. For example, underpay highly trained Hungarian developers, arrogant manner of communication in meetings with little to no room for feedback. The company seems to be hiring fresh graduates because of it's increasing bad reputation, and bad retention. There are only a few I know who stayed longer than 3, maximum 5 years. Formlabs fires people in an ambush-like manner, basically they book a meeting and you'll have 2-3 hours to save your data, collect your things and say goodbye, occasionally known to try to avoid paying you severance saying you violated internal policies. They had a logically flawed merit based reward system at services that is not based on the quality of work, and its effects on potential revenue, but the amount of work done (This could have changed ever since).The company increases profits, but did not follow inflation in salaries, or compensation. Did not grant any bonuses (Hungary) no matter how good the company was performing according to their internal financial reports. Anti-unionist management.

Inept, growingly insular, unempathetic senior leadership (managers of managers). We all know companies aren’t meant to care about you but damn.. “R and D Reset”: 9% of engineering surprise fired on one day for “performance reasons”. This layoff was executed at the peak of engineering achievement and company growth stemming from the launch of the Form 4 generation product line refresh. A sour taste to leave in every engineers mouth right at what I would call the peak of my personal Formlabs tenure. The largest complaint from this decision was that nearly none of those let go were given negative feedback over their recent performance reviews before being dismissed without notice. Senior leadership worked to appease, by claiming that the “new bar” for performance would be well communicated and future firings would not come as a surprise. Despite this, in the last two months I have witnessed the following within the engineering organization: A 6-year engineer who had never received a biannual performance review noting they did not “meet expectations” or better was abruptly fired for “performance reasons” the Friday before their approved sabbatical. A senior engineer was unexpectedly let go as their partner was expecting their first child any day. It is unclear if either of these employees received the sabbatical and parental leaves they earned. Poor continuity of management or teammates: After the R and D reset in the Fall of 2024, SLS hardware engineering had a team of 21 engineers led by 3 managers. One year later, 2 of the three managers have left. 7 SLS engineers are no longer at Formlabs. If you are a candidate planning on joining an SLS engineering team in the next year, I would not. If it is your only opportunity, tread carefully. If you are a prospective candidate for a management role, good luck. No external hardware engineering hires made in the last 5 years have survived more than a year or two. There are currently none employed. HR: Our Chief People Officer is a Wayfair alum. Today, every manager reporting to her was also hired from Wayfair. If you know Wayfair, you know that’s all you need to know. If you don’t, take a quick peek at their glassdoor page. Achievements include: Implementation of a role leveling system across Formlabs; strategically suppressing performance based compensation increases to be limited to “promotions” from one level to the next. With that system in place, they have worked with managers to shift the goalposts of their “leveling framework” to prevent promotions (and thus adjustments greater than standard COL increases of 2-4%). The majority of hardware engineers have been boxed into level 2 or level 3. I am not aware of any promotions from level 2 to 3 or level 3 to 4 since the inception of this policy 3 years ago. Revamped recruiting guidance to focus on candidates with “high slope”. Examples of strong positive slope indicators included a theoretical resume of a Tufts student who transferred to MIT before applying for an internship. “Anti-indicators” of slope included candidates who had worked more than 3 years without a promotion (nearly all engineers at Formlabs). Instituted a toxic system asking employees to stack rank members of their team during performance review cycles. Compensation and Benefits: - Expect 50th percentile compensation - Only one opportunity to cash out equity in company history. (2021. Only up to 25% of accrued equity could be sold. Only those with greater than a two year tenure were eligible to sell any shares) - Bottom of the barrel United Healthcare insurance - No 401k match - Parental leave (actually reasonably good) - Sabbatical (6 weeks) if you can survive 7 years outputting high impact work at low compensation. That is if they don’t fire you the day before you start your sabbatical - Flexible OoO (depending on your manager and voluntold work across weekends and holidays) - There is plenty of parking onsite - Lunch 3x a week with snacks (remains a good benefit despite a gradual decline in quality) - Some nice company parties and events (still existent yet slowly declining in frequency and quality) - Unlimited 3D printing (a truly great benefit if you have time for side projects)

- Expectations are high for every employee. For people who get satisfaction of pushing themselves and working hard, this is a plus. However, when your life outside of works becomes busy and stressful, it’s safe to assume your life at Formlabs will not slow down. - Changes happens quickly. The work and the expectations will constantly be changing, and you will be expected to keep up with them and consistently perform to a high standard. - A current bias towards filling open roles with external talent. Formlabs is looking for employees who can perform the functions of every job to a high level, and generally would prefer to bring external talent in to fill that gap. If you are looking to grow your career or your skill set, your mobility may be limited for most opportunities.