23andMe Reviews

Pros

Free Gym Good work-life balance Amazing Team

Cons

The office has mostly healthy snacks!

Pros

The people are great. Diverse and super smart, caring colleagues who work hard and care about customers and making great products and experiences. Beautiful, open work spaces, free food! Fearless leader who wants to change the world and cares about people inside and outside of the Company

Cons

Minor in comparison to the pros but it is true that the Company should re-evaluate the decision to eliminate cash bonus program and make sure to promote from within to keep the culture strong and growing

Advice to Management

Keep working hard Keep the transparency to employees and the focus on making the product the best it can be

Pros

There's a lot of potential value in the data. The dog policy is pretty nice, and there are a lot of cute office dogs around. The office is in a decent location, and they offer a Caltrain Go Pass.

Cons

The company doesn't seem to care about employees. They don't offer any training or career development. They pay significantly under market rates, and there are no bonuses. They don't give equity, only options which are priced high enough that you're not likely to see any upside, if you can even afford to purchase them. And the options are ultimately worthless, anyway, because the company has no intentions to IPO.... The new Sunnyvale office is a nightmare. The desks are all in open office layouts in rooms the length of football fields with no sound dampening. When employees brought up designating the desk areas as quiet spaces, the executives actively rejected this, stating "quiet" wasn't part of the company culture. Work from home is strongly discouraged, and if your team doesn't have butts in seats, expect to get bad feedback from above. While ostensibly a tech company, engineering is not really valued as if it were. As a result, there is not a strong engineering culture, and your experience will be strongly team dependent, since directors tend to form silos. Some teams aren't allowed to say 'no' to requests, and constantly burn out team members. Others barely do anything. Teams rarely coordinate, and as a result very little gets written down or documented. There are often multiple teams working on near-identical projects because they don't know about each other. Trying to deploy new services is a hassle because nothing is written down, and because different security and infrastructure 'experts' won't agree on what you need to do. Things are micromanaged by execs. Every hire, raise, and promotion has to be personally approved by the CEO. All company objectives come from the top down, and there's no communication upwards from employees about whether or not they're feasible or reasonable. The execs claim to hold weekly Q&A sessions, but substantive questions are either deleted or given vague non-answers. Expect to spend hours of your week giving status updates.

Advice to Management

Listen to the employees and let them share in the success of the company. Pay better and give RSUs (yes, these can be structured to not trigger tax until an IPO, despite your misconceptions) and bonuses. IPO, offer liquidity, or pay more. Give employees pleasant, quiet, low-distraction places to work or let them WFH. Keep the 'tech' part in mind, and value good engineers. Fire anyone on the exec team who can't give... an honest answer about their plans. Fire half the engineering directors and put the engineers in cross-functional teams instead of silos. Take concrete steps to allow employees to feel comfortable being themselves at work, rather than paying lip service to diversity.

Pros

free lunch, rooftop, dog-policy, Cal train go pass

Cons

horrible pay, they do not do sign-on bonuses or any type of bonuses or raises through out the year. just equity refreshers, which are pointless bc the company is private with no IPO in sight. Micro managing taken to an extreme. Not a flexible work from home policy. Schedule meetings over lunch often and make you go to a supposedly "fun" friday lunch meeting but actually it is just so you do not have any free... time/break for yourself during the day. honestly think the product is hoax and the company is ultimately going to fail. DO NOT WORK HERE

Pros

- Great CEO - Fantastic use of agile - Healthy food - Great culture - Interesting / inspiring product

Cons

Your manager matters. Get a bad one and expect: - Micromanagement - Harassment - Blaming - Cliques - Constant team structure flux

Advice to Management

Pay attention to attrition on a team. Pay attention to the mood of the team. Are your managers reflecting the culture and values of the organization?

Pros

Organic and healthy food, nice colleagues

Cons

Hiring process is a mess. HR were unprofessional and provided wrong information during hiring process. Poor management with no career development. No intention to develop or retain employees

Advice to Management

Hire someone who knows how to do the work rather than who knows how to talk.

Pros

low politics and open culture

Cons

Compensation is very poor comparable to market, no bonuses

Advice to Management

Add back bonuses to compensation package and make salary comparable to market to retain good employees and reduce attrition

Pros

All the start up perks of free food and great benefits

Cons

Micro managers, toxic environment- no raises, no bonuses- no on boarding or training to get you up to speed.