Alarm.com Reviews

Pros

- Know how to work hard, but also have a good time
- Interested in your career growth and development
- Flexible schedules
- Green room and rustic staircase at HQ

Pros

This is a great first job. You will learn a lot about real-world software engineering (all the stuff your CS degree didn't teach you).

- The culture is very unique and laid back. People here are also very friendly towards each other.
- Nobody will micromanage you or force you to work a certain way
- The work/life balance is great. If you are good at your job, you will rarely stay at work more than 45 hours per week.
- Flexible hours: you have to be available after new code is deployed (in case you need to fix bugs), but that's about it

Advice to Management

The compensation scheme is not competitive. This is a recurring theme across many glassdoor reviews, and management seems to be dismissive/indifferent whenever compensation is discussed.

The annual raise and bonus is capped at around 5000 each. Considering that the average starting salary here is around 90000, the expected annual increase in compensation would be 5000 annually (about 5.6% annually). After three years, your salary would have increased by only 17.8%. But if you switch jobs, you can expect an instant increase of 25%-50%. ADC will never match this, so it would be financially irresponsible to stay longer than a few years.

Pros

1. This is a great place to start one's career. As a software engineer I have gotten a chance to work on multiple projects where I got to learn a lot of new things and work on large scale projects. I think this is a great place to start for any college grad.

2. Work / Life balance is great - You are not micro-managed and given the flexibility to work on your own schedule.

3. Good Co-Workers - Generally speaking all the people I work with are great.

4. Others - You have a direct line to the VP. You will get to learn a lot if you get an opportunity to work with him. However, I think this is generally not the case anymore.

Advice to Management

1. Please look into having more defined career paths for the employees.
2. Please look into the compensation package. All reviews seem to be complaining about the compensation, so it is probably high time to look into this more carefully.

Keep up with the good work otherwise.

Pros

Management treats you like an intelligent human being. I have yet to experience being talked down to. You are recognized for putting in the work and there is a lot of room for advancement, not just in position, but in knowledge. I've learned so much since I've started here less than a year ago, that I now feel comfortable helping my own team members on some pretty difficult situations. I have been given added responsibility, raises, bonuses, and I haven't even hit the one year mark. This is the place to come to if you are willing to put in the work and want to advance, but it is also the place to come to if you just want to do your job well and go home without any added responsibilities. Please don't join this team if you plan on doing the bare minimum, it will be noticed, and your team members will not appreciate it.

The team environment is the best I've ever worked in. I have never had a bad day when it comes to coworkers and this is me coming from a job where I was sad and frustrated every day. Here people pull you up. You look sad and they want to make you smile. They will do everything they can to help you have a good day.

Advice to Management

Add diversity to the upper management.

Pros

I have a strong opportunity to develop myself here and make an impact, it's not a micro-managed environment but one where you can truly influence and grow your capabilities. They expect you to self manage and lead versus waiting to be told what to do but at the same time, you have mentors and open communication. 1000% times better than anywhere else I've worked. Our office is incredible with an indoor greenhouse room with plants and special air quality and lighting and music. Not making this up! It's the most relaxing place and I come to the office on the weekends sometimes to use this room.

Advice to Management

Keep doing our annual company weekend off-site trip. It's a unique aspect of our culture that bonds everyone and helps to keep employees informed. And it's fun! Thanks for doing it!

Pros

First let me say that working at Alarm.com (ADC) was an amazing experience for me. But I joined at a time where a lot of my positive moments were with the ADC of old. This is no longer a mid-growth stage startup, and the company that this is today is a far cry from the one I joined. So it's hard for me to objectively give both these pros and cons. But I will try my best to note a few pros that were still relevant by the time of my departure.

The people and culture are awesome- If you enjoy a place where you could and would actually want to hang out with coworkers outside of work, this is that place.

Culture- pay is not everything. ADC puts in a lot of work in creating a great working atmosphere and planning many fun and enjoyable events.

Very trendy tech- Just look at all of the buzz around IoT and smart homes in the press. This is a great launch pad for roles in the future and amazing to put on your CV.

Autonomy- I found that a lot of my work had a lot of autonomy which was very nice (however, that trend was diminishing over time)

Non-government tech in DC- So you want to work for a true tech company in the DC area, and not work in the government sector... Well of course you're reading this, ADC is on a short list ; )

Advice to Management

Read Starbucks 2015 letter to Shareholders. Look at how Starbucks talks about their employees and then follows up with clear and measurable actions. Now compare their turnover rate to that of other coffee and retail shops. There is a clear lesson for ADC there.

I know you in Management read these reviews. I know the cons I mentioned are a big problem for you and I know some people are probably loosing sleep about it. Good. There are people who provide for their families in the expensive DC metro area and try to build their carriers at ADC. These things matter. Please don't hold another HR talk or send out a vapid company news letter about this, you've done it before and everyone knows it for the lip service that it is.

Please actually take some steps and address these items; not words, a plan. Create an industry compensation matching scheme or a career growth plan for employees with goals and milestones, or something like that. There are so many options, and a hundreds of books, consultants, and similar companies you can look to for help here. ADC is special, but you are still a company. You are not above dealing with compensation and career track development. You can't "great culture" your way out of facing this. Don't give another talk; take action. That's all there is to it. Anything less (given the mountain of evidence and feedback you have) is simply willful ignorance.

Pros

- Best Team I have ever worked with including managers, peers, and employees in general. Everyone one is motivated to work at a high level day in and and day out. Everyone is looking out for each other and has your best interest in mind.

- Great challenges everyday that keep you constantly learning and growing. I have learned more in this role than all my previous roles combined I would say.

- Top workplace for a reason, culture is like no other position I worked before, incredibly collaborative, interesting, fun, and challenging.

- Being a Leader, I know I have influence on many decisions that go towards the overall goals of the company.

- Growing company which means you have opportunities that may not even be currently there right now, but you have the ability to pave your way if you work hard enough.

- No matter who you are your idea is listened to.

- Let's not forget about the sweet technology we get to use on a daily basis.

Advice to Management

Continue to listen to everyone and anyone to stay fresh and keep doing what you are doing. Great job!

Pros

Great people, work environment, culture.
Personal desk space.
Understanding management.
Training and resources are vast
Plenty of room to grow within.

Advice to Management

If you choose to use recruiting companies again, please make sure details are known and effectively communicated to all parties. This has been the most frustrating experience ever with a company and believe me when I say this I really want to love it here.

Pros

Great culture, friendly co-workers, fun environment, cool technology.
There is a big focus on employee happiness and making sure that happiness gets translated to customer satisfaction.

Advice to Management

Keep doing what you're doing.

Pros

1. Great co-workers. Everyone is very willing to extend their help to others, especially the QE's are very helpful to us. Everyone in the company is quite friendly and easy to talk to.

2. If you're a very social person, you will like the different things that happen at the office apart from work. There is a group called soco which does some fun events.

3. Office space is pretty decent and calm. Not a modern look that everyone thinks it is, but good enough. There is a very good staircase that connects all four floors internally. The office is still a maze due to it's weird structure.

4. A very good place for college graduates to work right after college but after 2-3 years if you're still doing the same thing you did in your first year, which is the case for most of them, then you should re-think about your career path. If you've done your part and worked hard but still in the same position with lower avg pay, then better to move on because the company does not want to pay more and you're just doing want they want. They don't seem to encourage engineers to move up in ranks.

5. The engineering teams try to get new tools and improve the work environment constantly when needed.

Advice to Management

Irrespective of what team/project employees work in, they should be fairly compensated to the market value and experience.