Vantaggi
- Their role in the industry provides a rare alternative career path for people with an arts or education background. - The people who work here are remarkably dedicated to what they do. It's humbling to see how much of themselves colleagues will give to advance company goals. - Even if I didn't agree with every covid policy, I always felt completely safe. I think the company was decently flexible with moving back into the office. - And the new office is really cool! I fully expected a bunch of bean bag chairs but it's a thoughtful space that accounts for many of the concerns employees raised about our last building.
Svantaggi
- Many customers resent our products & the company, especially within the music brands. If you work with customers directly you'll get discouraged fast; It is uniquely hostile. - No one has time for you, especially your boss. Every dev team is busy with fourteen projects that were due a year ago. This was already a problem before the pandemic. It continues to worsen as my colleagues leave for better opportunities, although I don't think it's a staffing problem. I think we're just repeatedly bad at planning. - This is one of those "passion" companies that uses your interest in the subject matter to justify poor compensation and unreasonable deadlines. It's also a place where your work-life "balance" is discussed but never provided. Whether I was releasing work in the middle of the night to meet an insane commitment, or harassed over the weekend by external partners, the one constant in my career was getting overworked. No matter your impact, the only substantive reward you get at Peaksware is more work. Speaking of rewards... - The pay has always been terrible. They show compensation ranges on job postings now, but I don't feel those reflect the company's promises at all. I'm certain people working alongside me felt badly underpaid. The company wastes so much money on stupid perks like free beer and food. It feels like a bribe when you can't even afford to live where you (have to) work. - They fumbled miserably with their long-term WFH policy. Some people are allowed to work remote indefinitely, while others apparently aren't important enough. Personally, I enjoy coming into the office but it sucks to work for a company that arbitrarily loses talent over unnecessary stuff like this. - You may have noticed I never mentioned personal growth. The company won't either. The downside of working in a unique role like mine is that clearly very few people knew what I did, or how I should grow. They use a bizarre framework system to evaluate your skills during reviews and no one takes it seriously. - I also feel that managers lack the negotiating tools they need to keep their employees. So tons of people leave the company and nothing gets documented or improved before they're gone. Rinse and repeat - I'm just going to say that everyone in the company wants to advance DE&I initiatives but it never happens. It disgusts me that a business with our resources doesn't prioritize this higher. - If you value agency in your work, you'd be better off somewhere else. This place feels like an old boy's club. Unsettling announcements like restructures seem to happen every two to three years. You always seem to find out later that the same 3-5 men continue to make poor choices for the rest of the company.