Don’t let the attractive employee perks fool you. A lot of companies, especially the newer tech companies, will offer an abundance of perks such as free breakfasts/lunches, free snacks, free beer, and unlimited PTO in an effort to keep their employees satisfied. Ultimately, this tactic is used to distract employees from the insultingly low merit increases you will receive as you advance your career. This is exactly what Building Engines does. I worked at Building Engines for 3+ years and received roughly a $600 salary increase over the years I’ve spent here. I had 3+ years of hands on experience within the company, and they paid the same as if I had none. They blamed the lack of merit increases on COVID, which at the time made sense, but then they continued to hire employees to fill managerial positions while grossly overpaying them. To sum up, Building Engines consists of grossly overpaid managers who think very highly of themselves, and grossly underpaid “workers” with no career direction. If you are someone looking for an entry level position or a second tier position that isn’t managerial, lower your expectations here.
This was another problem I had at Building Engines. There is next to no room for career growth. Building Engines will keep you at the same position for 10 years if you never opened your mouth. If you did find yourself in a position where there is a job opening that you’re interested in within the company, they’ll likely make some sort of excuse as to why the position is not available to you, even if you’re more than qualified. Instead they will defer to hiring a “qualified” outside candidate to fill the managerial roll. These hires are all pretty much a carbon copy of one another. They are very good at selling themselves as the correct candidate for the position. They all use the fancy buzzwords that make them appear smarter than everyone else (and they will certainly believe they are smarter than everyone else). But they rarely have any experience in the SaaS industry. Over the course of my time here, I’ve seen this exact scenario play out roughly 5 times in my department alone. Probably a lot more if including other departments. Another common trait between these manager hires is that they very rarely ever make it more than a year. Managerial turnover was a big problem. Every new manager would come in with new “ideas” on how to make the company better, but they were pretty much just trying to clean up the mess the previous manager left. They would come in and change up a few processes, screw some things up, point any blame at the lower level employees, then leave the company with a round of applause. I’m surprised Building Engines continued to fall for the same mistake over and over again by bringing in outside hires rather than giving a hard working employee who has been at the company awhile a shot. To me, it felt like we were working in circles. Wasting all this time trying to “streamline” new processes which rarely worked out, instead of actually getting work done. A lot of wasted time with no focus on company direction, and nobody seemed to have any clue what that direction even was. It was actually amazing how little work was accomplished and nobody seemed to care, but as long as we can save 5 minutes a month fixing this processes it’s all worth it was the mindset. If you care about learning and developing skills to help advance your career, this is likely not the company for you.
