A recruiter recently DM'ed me. Any thoughts on the Computer Vision team at Verkada? Is there growth potential and room for cool projects rn? Is the culture as bad as the reviews mention? #startup #verkada #advice
If your goal is to work alongside a top class CV team and to learn at a fast-paced environment then Verkada is likely for you. Tons of potential growth from its core video security offering to the new integrated products they are releasing. The scope seems very big and very cool. Culture reviews at every growing startup are usually bad and overblown - more specific to sales but management has been addressing things properly.
Thanks! Where do you see company valuation being 2 years down the line?
Not sure but culture will kill this company or at least significantly impact valuation. Some of these issues have now reached the media. Leadership is definitely not top class which hurts every team. I'd recommend finding another startup. The reviews are unfortunately accurate.
Company has been solid from my experience. Onboarding was great despite a pandemic. Seems like everyone loves it from conversation. I recommend it often.
Culture is very bad, yes. :( Business Insider just published a negative article about us with regards to culture and sexual harassment. And others will follow, I'm sure. My shares are likely going to be worth a lot less because of all this negative press. Separately, whatever cool stuff you want to do doesn't matter because you just get told what to build from the CEO, and almost all of the time, it's not about building cool features. It's about cutting costs. You will spend all your time figuring out how to do what we already do but at less cost. This is a sales and margin driven company, not a product driven company. And anyone that tries to convince you otherwise is either deluded or lying. If you like cost cutting, then that's fine, but wanted you to be aware since you talked about building cool features. Also, something to note - the CFO is known to try and post here as if he's an engineer to try and counter the negative reviews.
there’s a suspicious user “vpy” commenting everywhere against negative comments and claims to be from eng. Is that the CFO?
Except from the articles : “Face match… find me a squirt,” the sales director wrote in Slack, according to the Vice report. The post was shared alongside images of employees taken from Verkada security cameras. “‘Face search,’ as it’s called, can pinpoint an individual in a sea of faces,” reported Vice. “The pinpointed face, in this instance, belonged to a Verkada employee, her mouth wide open.” Penalty: "After the Slack incident was reported to HR, Verkada CEO Filip Kaliszan gave employees in the Slack channel a choice: leave the company or have their stock options reduced. All of them chose to stay and take the stock option cut, according to Vice." All the offenders are still at the company!!! What? Irony : How are the female employees feeling safe when the very survelliance cameras which the company is building/selling to keep people safe are being used to invade their privacy!! Why would anyone buy any product from this company anymore knowing the track record of their employees who are still there!??!! Leadership has clearly shown with their mockery of a penalty who and what's important to them.
Leadership only cares about making money. They don't care about any employee's wellbeing, no matter how much they say they do. Actions speak louder than words.
Buyer beware - this company openly harassed women and has a frat culture
CV team is the best I've worked with (I was previously at multiple self-driving companies). Most of the team is from the self-driving space and/or Snap. Each dept/team has it's own culture. Eng is very different from Sales and CV team in particular is it's own more academic culture than the rest of eng.
Verkada Forever!