Brighterion Reviews

Pros

Innovation, work/life balance
Very satisfied with working at technology company.

Cons

Survival of the fittest
Compensation
not allowed to even wear one earphone in and listen to music

Advice to Senior Management

Create more cross pollination of projects, technology and ideas

Pros

I was able to pick up basic SQL skills which transferred over to my next position. Unfortunately not mu ch else.

Cons

Actual work pace was glacial and there were often long periods of downtime. Learning other programming languages during this downtime was discouraged. Was lowballed for compensation but as a new-grad i didn't have much choice.

Pros

The employees are smart and you get a challenging experience where you should learn something. The company has a lot of potential growth. I don't have any issues with the CTO as some people have complained about him, he is very intelligent, but has high standards for work considering the very low pay.

Cons

The pay and benefits are terrible. I would recommend that potential employees look for a job a little longer before considering Brighterion.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay employees better. The possibility of future stock options can not be substituted for pay. If you are trying to grow staff, you need to pay at least close to market rates. Most people on staff are at least casually looking for a job elsewhere.

Pros

• Great office location
• Great people to work (world-class engineers).
• Excellent industry reputation
• Challenging projects / never boring.
• Relaxed working environment / Great culture of respect.
• Technical knowledge sharing

Cons

Lack of formal processes which results in many last minute requests

Advice to Senior Management

More communication on strategic direction to employees

Pros

Easy access to workplace by means of public transportation.
Friendly (non management) coworkers that will get you through your time there.
Good view from office location.

Cons

Salary is horrible
Outdated software is used in every single computer.
No internet access.
Disrespectful bosses with horrible leadership skills.
Lack of communication between Management and employees makes work 100% more difficult.
Boring work, most of the queries that need to be performed by the modeling department are already pre-written, meaning that all one has to do is press the enter button and wait for days or at times even weeks for them to finish.
Boring weekly meeting that last 1 to 2 hours where only management speaks, participation from other members seemed to be frowned upon.

Advice to Senior Management

Communication is a must at every workplace, it will create a better working environment. A change in the management team is a must, especially in the CEO department.

Pros

• Employees interact freely across the company and at all levels
• Employees are genuinely excited about Brighterion's products.

Cons

• Work-from-home is impossible
• If you are someone who thrives in a well-structured, unambiguous and procedures-based environment, you might feel a bit frustrated.

Advice to Senior Management

I think the Executive Management team at Brighterionn is fantastic - they even have great personalities and know how to have fun.

Pros

• Working with the brightest minds
• Relaxed environment
• Pride in the products
• Multicultural environment
• Good training
• Work/life balance,

Cons

Due to the sensitivity of the data they process, more stringent security measures are applied ( no internet access on my desktop computer)

Advice to Senior Management

I would advise more team meetings between departments (QA, DEV, Modeling) to keep people closer together in terms of communication

Pros

You will learn how to deal with difficult bosses
You will learn that communication and opinions are not valued everywhere
Great coffee shop on the first floor of the building
Great view from most of the cubicles.

Cons

Starting pay is one of the worst in the industry, it doesn't even come close to it. In a city as expensive as SF, brighterion starting salary will have you looking for a second job or calling mom to move back in.
Communicating with management is virtually impossible, your opinion and suggestions will fall in deaf ears.
weekly meetings are a joke, where one only talks about things that can be discussed through email, never once did a meeting turn to be productive.
Do yourself a favor and run away

Advice to Senior Management

Read the reviews on glassdoor, you will learn a lot from past employees. Your policies need to be reviewed and employees need to be treated respectfully.

Pros

Convenient downtown SF location.

Work is from 8 - 5 and only some overtime required here and there.

Exposure to basic SQL and Excel in a work environment.

Cons

Pay is extremely low, starting at $20k/year aka. "training salary". Benefits are bad, I assume the minimum required by law.

The middle management (one manager for the programmers and two for the modeling team) have very little management skills. They'd usually come around once in the morning and once about 10 minutes before it was time to go home.

The modeling work is extremely boring, and it involves running AI software on large databases which can take days or in some cases even weeks. And I'm not sure what we were supposed to do during this time but you weren't allowed to do anything else. Even things that you'd imagine to be encouraged like programming were banned.

The work computers don't have internet access, and there was only one computer that could be used for research etc. It also had a primitive firewall to block addresses like www.gmail.com or certain sports sites. Listening to music is forbidden.

The only thing left to do is to communicate with the other people with the messaging system, but apparently the management reads the logs so be careful what you say.

This is not a fun place to work. Everybody seemed to be frightened and waiting for the next time the CEO goes off on one of his rants, and/or somebody gets fired. It was made clear several times by the CEO that work in California is at will, and that everybody is replaceable.

Pros

The people working for Brighterion form truly a unique group. Technical abilities, innovation and the overall quality of people within the company are far above the norm.
Excellent work / life balance
Surrounded by smart and motivated people
Challenging work/ job satisfaction
Respect for employees

Cons

High stress due to the pursuit of excellence.

Advice to Senior Management

The strategy has been defined pretty good at the top management level but had some issues while trickling down throughout the organization.