Mixed Bag of Great Coworkers and Product but Questionable Management
Pros
- Great product; - Healthy work-life balance; - Good benefit options; - Interesting problems to solve; - Amazing coworkers; I thought the Swimlane product was really impressive. I learned about something else it could do almost every day I worked on it. I think the product has great potential as long as the company continues to listen to current and potential clients while keeping an eye on what is popular in the general market. It has a lot of difficult and interesting problems it is trying to solve, which is exciting. The work-life balance was great! This may vary from manager to manager, but there was little expectation to work overtime or outside of normal hours (though this is not quite the case for those not based in the United States). And with unlimited PTO, taking a day off for a three-day weekend or a few weeks was never an issue. As long as the work got done and enough of a heads up was provided, PTO was always approved. I enjoyed everyone I worked with or talked to while at Swimlane. Lots of smart people who enjoy what they do. I never had any issues or conflicts with anyone. The benefits were pretty much on par for other companies of the same size. 401k matching, equity in the company, healthcare, etc.
Cons
- Onboarding; - Code quality; - Career movement; - Changing culture; - Upper management; Upon joining the company, the onboarding process started out great. I was given most of the tools (computer, software, vpn, etc.) that I needed to start working from day one. But after that initial setup, things started to go downhill. A lot of the code had little to no documentation, and there were only a few developers at the company with the historical knowledge to explain how and why things were architected. From what I have gathered, there has been quite a bit of turnover at Swimlane, and thus the code and its documentation is quite inconsistent. I have worked for a handful companies thus far in my career, and I think that Swimlane codebase has been the most chaotic and uninviting thus far. After a principle engineer (usually helps architect and lead larger initiatives) left, I immediately expressed my interest in the role to try to help take care of the tech debt and lack of quality. I wanted to help architect our codebase to be more scalable, testable, and easier to learn for new hires. Unfortunately, I was dragged along and never had any official conversations with those who could make that decision, even after bringing up my interest on multiple occasions. It just felt weird they would not try to promote within first before looking outside the company for a candidate. I would rather be told I am not qualified than to be left in the dark. Swimlane started a hiring freeze right after I joined the company, so teams that really needed additional help were left trying to complete work that needed at least a few more qualified individuals to achieve the goal in a reasonable timeframe with quality. This especially became true when a bunch of general and quality engineers where fired all at once near the end of 2022. And then after the layoffs, a steady stream of people continued to leave. But then the company hired a bunch of new directors and started hiring for a team in India in early 2023. Felt very weird to see existing teams and engineers struggling while hiring more high-level leadership and engineers for new teams instead of supporting existing teams. In the end, I decided to leave the company for a variety of reasons, most of which having to do with the culture change that seemed to occur after bringing in some new directors and upper management. I really want the product to succeed and be amazing, but if they do not bring in or dedicate some existing individuals to fix the quality issues I saw while working the codebase, I am not sure how long they will keep good developers, let alone customers.
