DigitalOcean Culture FAQ

Pros

My type of role is quite unique, but this is what I've seen after being part of DigitalOcean for more than six months. As you'll see, I had a pretty good experience at DigitalOcean, which is reflected in this review... Part of the DigitalOcean values are things like simplicity, love, community and respect, which are things I care about and lived by the whole company, from top to bottom. We have great products, easy to use but full of advanced features for developers, all this, at a competitive price which makes my life easier in my role. The fact that our editors and technical writers teams are delivering worldwide class quality is also a blessing. Most tutorials written aren't centered around our product, which says a lot about the focus on community and helping others. I obviously cannot speak for all the business, but within my team, and my department, the motto is people first. We have a long-term vision: the management and the company invest in people instead of just thinking of them as production machines. The culture is highly remote, and the people team goes the extra mile to make us feel like we are part of the company with perks that are quite amazing like sending us coffee and snacks every month, or even some comfort food during the holidays. Those are small gesture that, again, strongly speaks about the culture. As for the salary and compensation, is it on par with any companies from the West Coast even if the head office is in NYC.

Cons

As a fast-growing company, a lot of emphasis are put on sales now, which may (hopefully not), change the culture of the enterprise. Don't get me wrong, I know we are a for-profit company, and I love seeing us grow as much as I love getting benefits out of it, but we need to keep our community focus culture. We also just had a new CEO and other changes in the structure, which means that right now, nothing is set in stone. On a positive note, we had a company-wide offsite recently and Yancey, our new CEO, gave me a great impression. He seems to be aligned with our values, and quite transparent about his future plans. We'll see where it goes!

Advice to Management

Continue to put people first. Continue to give folks the freedom they need to be successful, grow personally as in their career, while still being there to support them when needed. Continue to care about our customers and be community centric.

Pros

Super remote-friendly, fast paced, lots of engineering challenges. Using a cool tech stack, cool architecture. Lots of opportunity for advancement. Very strong interview/onboarding process, upper-tier (not quite FAANG but still extremely good) compensation/benefits. Managers, mine at least, are vested in helping their direct reports succeed in their careers, get promoted, etc. Very supportive environment.

Cons

Technical debt in some areas of the org; consistency in engineering practices could be greatly improved. There is a lot of expectation, so you better be prepared to put in the work and get up to speed. Not a place to "park" your career by any means.

Advice to Management

Keep it up, things are going well!

Pros

- The hiring process was a bit long, but probably one of the best, most straightforward hiring experiences I have been through. - The remotee-first culture is fantastic, really setting the bar for how to operate a company in a distributed fashion. - There is a lot of cutting-edge technology to work with/on, and a lot of smart, helpful people to work on it with you. - The path forward is starting to materialize with a new CEO and executive suite at the helm, with (seemingly) a lot of opportunity for innovation and career growth within the company.

Cons

- A lot of longer-term employees are starting to churn. It isn't clear why people leave all the time, but this can be off-putting or demoralizing when just starting out, not being sure if they have better context on whether we are headed in "the right direction." - It is not clear that there is strong technical leadership at the top. This has led to a lot of disparity at the bottom, which needs to be cleaned up if we want to grow at the pace we have been recently.

Advice to Management

Love is what makes us great. It's a core value, but it does not always seem to be put at the forefront by some. It is one of the things I noticed during hiring and continue to notice by those employees exemplifying the values, but there are others who appear to have ulterior motives.