SunRun Reviews

I worked at SunRun full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Performance is rewarded over seniority, experience or politics. If you're a high performer you're going to love it here.

Mission-driven company where entire organization rallies around making the world better. Unlike other places I've worked that claim to be changing the world, Sunrun really is.

Senior management team is smart about strategy and is building business to win in the long-run. This means not making short-term tradeoffs that create buzz but not earnings.

You're given as much responsibility as you want. This is a great place for A players to get experience above and beyond their years.

Sunrun spends time developing their people in ways that even much bigger companies do not. Frequent and meaningful 1-on-1s, actual leadership development program with a real curriculum, great access to senior management. You're going to get all the tools you need here to grow your career.

Cons – Performance-centric culture means if you're not good at your job you're going to feel some pressure to improve. Sunrun will give you the support you'll need, but it's up to you to nail your job. People who don't are going to leave for organizations with a lower bar.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I worked at SunRun full-time for less than a year

Pros – Heroic mission: democratizing clean energy and breaking dirty-utilities' monopoly

Brain trust: Extremely impressive staff, mega-horsepower IQ-wise. Creates a fantastic high performance work environment.

High energy, high ideals: The success of this company and industry (solar service/PPA financing arrangements for middle-class homeowners) means the survival of the planet and the financial stability of ordinary homeowners. No, that's not over-stating the case. The staff reflects that.

Self-reflection: they put a good deal of time into rethinking and reorganizing how the company works. The all-staff training boot-camp was time and resource intensive and worth every dime/minute.

Some departments had the tightest interpersonal cohesion I've seen anywhere. Some of the execs have deep commitment to their staff's development and happiness.

Cons – Overworked/overstressed: not unusual to witness nervous melt-downs from staff inability to complete all their tasks. Work loads even for these thoroughbreds were off the charts. The curse of the blessing of rapid growth, but a real life-quality issue.

Growth pains (and it is **fast** growing!) and accompanying cracks and challenges were often attributed/scapegoated to individuals, rather than acknowledged as system faults. Historically there's been quite a bit of quittings and firings that a more mature, experienced company could have avoided, in my opinion.

Lack of experience: youth valued over experience. lots of reinvention of the wheel. Would benefit from hiring more experienced, battle-hardened gray-hairs. And respecting the ones they have.

Juvenile office culture: weekly enforced sales-cheers with floor pounding to annoy the building neighbors, egg-eating contests, colleagues acting as if you are asking to copy their homework when soliciting their input on a group or interdepartmental project. Endless noise and interruptions -- idealization of extroverted, open-space plan. Subsequently most staff fight to carve out quiet space to think. My favorite day at Sunrun was a holiday when only 6 of us were in office. It was actually possible to think. Heaven.

In sum: If you need quiet to think and produce, think twice about this workplace.

Advice to Senior Management – Foster TEAM-building - meaning trust-creation among individuals - rather than encouraging simple rah-rah company-worship.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at SunRun full-time for more than a year

Pros – The first thing that attracted me to Sunrun was the mission. It's no small feat to install around 5 MW of residential solar in a month, and the company and it's Co-CEO founders are driven by this mission to change the face of energy as we know it. Once I started working here I was engaged and inspired by the people I found at the office. My colleagues, both in and out of my department, are incredibly intelligent and motivated people who create a fun and energetic working environment. The leadership recognizes good work and strong potential and rewards that work with trust and the possibilities for advancement. The company continues to keep its culture strong even while buckling down on the big challenges we are facing - snacks and drinks in the kitchen and two company meals a week help this! Sunrun is definitely what you make of it, but if you put something into it you'll get a lot out of it.

Cons – Though environmentally inspired, much of the current team seems to place environmental issues on the back burner behind a focus on an exciting business model and start-up culture. I would love to see more internal focus on the environmental benefits of the work we're trying to do, and the challenges we still have to face.

Since Sunrun is still in its adolescence, we have a lot of learning to do. In a stressful environment, there are times that good advice is not heeded if it comes through improper channels, which can cause employee unrest. We're still a little nearsighted in terms of problem solving, which occasionally feels like we're only backfilling to solve issues rather than trying to look for broader solutions that will save time and money in the future. However, this is improving and we'll continue to learn and grow!

Advice to Senior Management – As the business grows further away from its start-up roots, find a good balance for the culture we used to have and the professionalism we have to maintain.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at SunRun full-time for more than a year

Pros – Sunrun has a great, high energy culture and smart, action-oriented people who believe in the company's mission and are truly a pleasure to work with. Sunrun is a collaborative environment where you have access to executives at every level and can affect change and see the immediate impact of your work. Additionally, it's a welcome change to work for a company that has "Be yourself" as one of it's core values and encourages employees to share their own professional value that they bring to the office each day.

For a late-stage start up, there are a variety of Benefits that most companies don't offer, from gym/health club reimbursement to a robust offering of leadership training to a fully stocked kitchen. We all work hard at Sunrun and it's nice that the company goes out of the way to make us feel valued.

I truly look forward to coming in to work each day and working hard- I would recommend any friend or colleague to work at Sunrun. It's a dynamic, fun company with a bright future ahead.

Cons – Sunrun is experiencing some growing pains right now as they move out of the start-up phase and develop more efficient process and economies of scale. With the right process and the right leaders in place, Sunrun's potential for growth knows no bounds.

Advice to Senior Management – Focus on process and priorities as the company grows. Continue to build and maintain the culture - it's a huge part of what makes Sunrun such a fun place to work. And continue to dream big and focus on how we can change the world; the mission of our company is inspiring and we can all use a regular reminder of the big picture that we are working towards.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at SunRun full-time for more than a year

Pros – -Positive Atmosphere
-Good Snacks
-Interesting Coworkers
-Good Location

Cons – -Top Heavy
-Internal Politics
-Lack of Process
-Difficulty in Making Decisions
-Rest and Vesters

Advice to Senior Management – Everyone shouldn't get a say in every decision, corporations don't work well that way, it just causes churn. Internal talent should be developed more, the first instinct is to hire outside. Long time employees are in positions that are beyond their abilities. Working weekends to make sales numbers is not sustainable long term, need to fix processes.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at SunRun full-time for more than a year

Pros – -Good views
-Non-management is respectful and intelligent
-Yoga
-Free food

Cons – -Upper management infighting stopping progress
-General lack of respect for "lower-level" employees
-No sense of direction. Fells like were swimming in circles
-Egos!
-No room for growth.

Advice to Senior Management – Put away your pride and focus on getting stuff done. That's the motto, right? Listen to those "below" you. We're your radars.
food and yoga are nice, but not an acceptable alternative to good management and respect for ALL employees. Not just the ones you issue press releases for.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I worked at SunRun full-time for more than a year

Pros – - Great people: I have made life-long friends here. There is true camaraderie in the Sunrun family.
- Sunrun is undergoing tremendous growth and faces a lot of good problems to tackle. The company has great investor relations and uninterrupted project finance

Cons – -Inconsistent and confused focus on employee development. Only the "chosen ones" are given opportunities to develop according to the company's plans.
- Not a place for self-starters and pioneers: If you want to carve your own path and pursue your passions, this is not the place for you. Sunrun hires for function, not talent development. There is a lot of untapped raw talent at this company and few channels to develop.
- This is finance company, not a technology company: If you want to work in software or technology, do not work here. Everything is investor oriented i.e. "will X make the investor happy" limiting room for technological innovation and ideation.

Advice to Senior Management – Allow your employees to growth. Understand there is a value compromise b/w the company's needs and personal development. Bottom line: happier employees who get to work according to their strengths and interests will generate greater value and foster stewardship. The day "stewardship" fell off as the company's values was the day Sunrun sacrificed employee development for scalability.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I worked at SunRun full-time for more than a year

Pros – Free snacks and sodas in kitchen.
Free Lunch once a week.
They try to soothe Monday Morning all-hands meetings with free breakfast.
Pay and benefits pretty good (heal care, dental, 401K).
Good views from the office windows.

Cons – Monday morning all-hands meetings.

Toxic culture. They claim to respect employees but I lost count of the amount of times people were just disrespected or advice ignored.

Engineering is a mess. If you are in Marketing that does appear to be better. Other departments have their usual ups and downs but all suffer from the problems at the top.

A lot of folks who left this company or were fired now work at competitors like SolarCity or Clean Power Finance. That in itself would not be so unusual, as industry folks want to work in their field. However, the vehement hatred expressed against SunRun even years later by many of these folks' would be surprising to most folks-but not to someone who was also their with them.

I still maintain friendships with many folks both ex-SunRun and current. I did make a lot of good friends here.

I myself was told, "You are making the biggest mistake in your life," when I left. It was actually the best choice I ever made.

There is an attitude in much of the management that if someone or something doesn't come from Stanford Business School, it's not worth listening to. They have ignored other folks at their peril, and as you can see from some of the other reviews here, that isn't working out too well.

Advice to Senior Management – Stop focusing on photo ops and nebulous claims about "industry dominance" and acting like you are better than environmentalists and people who care about the world. Actually do your jobs.

Focus on treating your employees with dignity and stop the hypocrisy that is ruining what could be an amazing company.

Right now Sunrun is the cute person who stops being cute the minute they open their mouth.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at SunRun full-time for less than a year

Pros – It's work culture, its people, and the company's purpose are in my mind exceptional. This is not a company founded and run by tree-hugging enthusiasts; there is brilliance in the business model (which is explains our success) and a deep sense of drive.

Cons – Developing infrastructure across all departments that can adequately support the business at scale. But then again, I guess this is a good problem to have.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at SunRun full-time for less than a year

Pros – I have been reading some of the reviews on this site and think they are extremely unfair. Therefore, I would like to add a voice from the other side of the satisfaction spectrum.

1) Room to work: in my experience they give you a task or objective and then you have an incredible amount of creative freedom about how you want to complete that task and how you want to use your time.

2) Mentoring: This is something the other reviews frequently mention as a negative, but I have had several great mentoring experiences here at Sunrun. I have a weekly 1-1 with my manager during which we talk about what I'm working on, where it should go, and what challenges I'm facing. Honestly, I haven't had a better set of bosses. They are active, fair, helpful, and clear about what they want. What more could you ask for than that?

3) Culture: Again, this is an aspect of Sunrun that has been taking hits in these reviews but I literally can't think of a way they could improve it. They encourage individuality, creativity, and input. They have a ping pong table on both floors, and the break rooms are unbelievably well stocked. They feed you lunch of Friday and breakfast on Monday. The brand team works hard to make sure the office looks good/is inspiring. I know, I know: the most important thing about a culture isn't the food and appearance. But those things do help - I work better when well fed. Oh yeah, and they have yoga Tuesdays and Thursdays.

4) The People: at least the other reviews were fair about this one. The people are all young, energetic, enthusiastic, and amazingly welcoming. Like I said, the other reviews were at least fair here, so I will not spend too much time on it - except to say that all the execs have been just as nice as my co-workers in my interactions with them. If there's "bad politics" going on, I haven't seen it.

Cons – If you don't live in the city the commute can be a bit painful - but really BARTing isn't that bad...

The company, and third party solar industry as a whole, are still trying to figure out the logistics of its rapid expansion, which causes some growing pains.

Advice to Senior Management – Although I do feel like you do this already to some extent, maybe acknowledge departments (and/or individuals) who are consistently going above and beyond. Small signs of appreciation go a long way - trophies or SWAG would be nice.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company