Work culture and TC of C3.ai
with recent trend in the successes of AI in businesses, I’m getting increasingly interested in moving to C3.ai. there is little information about there work culture and their stock has tanked quite a bit in the last one year. so I’m seeking the guidance of fellow blinders for SWE positions (10yoe) Q1: How does a typical day looks like, specially in the Ex Machina side. Q2: How are the people’s managers. Any red flags? Q3: Will they match current TC: 500k #software #C3.ai
C3
C3.aiAre you a dev or something else?
SWE
The culture is absolutely shit and toxic. They don't respect you or your time. One executive no showed for an interview with no warning. Even the recruiter didn't know. Fuck this company. The executives don't give a damn about you. You are nothing to them, but a number on a screen. The ceo and founder's son are executives in the company. There is so much nepotism and old boy's club going on it was intoxicating. I rejected their offer after a super toxic interviewing process. Fuck C3.ai. They can go bankrupt for all I care.
So you didn’t even work there?
Who would when they have any other option?
You are better off staying with snap.
The coworkers are nice and smart, feel bad about them cuz the company is totally a mess, toxic culture and management team don’t have a clue about the product. Leadership are constantly changing their minds and don’t know what to expect.
1) Can’t say about Ex Machina, but usually it’s just couple hours meeting/designing architectures/etc and 3-4 hours of implementing - pretty standard SWE. It’s good to be in the office cause it’s much faster to finish tasks 2) This is very team dependent - but most managers seem to have 7-10+ years exp and are pretty nice. In my experience I’ve prolly seen 1 in like 10 is an a** hole. So it really depends. 3) This might be possible - I can’t say much about it - but if they do that’d be sick for you cause stock price is pretty low and you’ll have a decent amount of upside
The working level ppl are great, smart, helpful, etc. the issue is leadership changes their minds on priorities all the time and the company is basically run by the CEO, no one senior pushes back on him and he can dictate things at a pretty granular level
also, don’t believe the marketing. The company markets ahead of the product even more than other tech companies.
run
Joining C3 AI was one of the biggest regrets of my professional career.
Great teammates to work with. But management is bad.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/c3-ai-insider-trades-29m-152447137.html
Look at the selling
I interviewed there for a ds role so might be irrelevant, but I noticed that there was no one with > 2 yrs experience that interviewed me and in the on-site interview I had I didn’t see anyone that appeared to be a senior dev/data scientist. at the company. You might be one of the most senior ppl there with 10 yoe. Everyone that interviewed me was really great to speak to, but managers were quite off putting.
I think DS is younger tho - SWE is pretty old school
Statistics is not young tho. From what I saw, the fact that that’s not evident at the company is part of its problem — especially for a company with a CEO who preaches from his singular understanding of technological history to enlighten us with its future. My perspective, a bunch of people who at one point made a successful shovel now think they know best how to farm. All the bad management stuff is true, day to day as an IC might be great, just If looking for a place with good leadership, I think stay away.
Yoe and location?
10, Bay Area