Former Employee - Software Engineerin San Francisco, CA
Doesn't Recommend
Negative Outlook
No opinion of CEO
I worked at Blend full-time for less than a year
Pros
New office with lots of light. Free lunch and dinner, and a well stocked kitchen. Sit-stand desks and Herman Miller Aeron chairs.
Cons
Engineering is all about speed. No regard to quality whatsoever. Management pushes too aggressively for features, putting developers under excessive pressure. No knowledge sharing forums or tutorials or anything that helps engineers with professional development.
Thank you for your feedback regarding Blend. I’d like to address the comments regarding quality and speed, as these have been growing focus areas for engineering this year.
We believe quality doesn’t come at the price of speed. Engineering teams need to have strong guardrails (such as a strong test suite) and development practices to achieve both. Our engineering principles call for both. Admittedly, as the team scales in size, these principles are becoming harder to maintain without explicitly scheduling work to improve them. As a company, we are now doing just that!
Over the past six months, we have implemented changes to our product development organization to ensure our quality bar is high as we iterate on features. At the highest level we have prioritized hardening our platform, improving our ability to test and monitor our systems, and developing tools to enable engineers to iterate more rapidly. In fact, quality of service and iteration speed are now company-level OKRs.
We are also changing how we work:
1. A feature is not considered done until all tests are written in a repeatable fashion.
2. We have moved from manual regression testing to a fully automated test suite.
3. Product and engineering leads are now jointly accountable for the overall quality of development, allowing healthy discussions during sprint planning between new feature work and technology improvements.
4. Development of engineering tools focused on improving quality and iteration speed is explicitly advocated for and resourced during product planning, including metrics to show how the tools increase overall productivity.
5. We have identified areas that cannot fail in the product and are iterating and strengthening how they are tested.
6. Quality engineers are now embedded in product development groups as masters of an area of the business.
Our customers demand quality, and we will continue to iterate and improve how we operate to maintain it. At Blend, we believe that we can have both speed and quality by demanding excellence of ourselves and how we work. Is there room for improvement? Definitely. As a team we should always be improving how we do things -- it’s one of our principles.
--Chris Dunn, Head of Engineering
I have been working at Blend full-time for more than a year
Pros
Management has been shooken up a bit over the past year, and is fairly solid.
Leadership came out openly and embraced Black Lives Matter and difficult discussions on race. Made a six figure donation as well. I think a year ago, that isn't a thing that would happen.
The Covid response was swift, and decisive. We tested a few days before most companies were even thinking of moving to WFH here in the bay area. I think Salesforce had us beat by a week. And then we decided to extend it indefinitely.
IT staff was definitely on top of things during Covid too. Made the WFH shift to home experience not as terrible. We were also given a $400 stipend to buy office related items, and they converted our catered lunches into a stipend as well to add to our paycheck to help out with any Covid related expenses (it's hard on parents!). And on top of that, added $50 for a home internet stipend.
Blend is extremely forgiving for mistakes. I'm aware of a multi-thousand dollar loss we took on one person's bad judgment. That person still works here. That isn't to say that they aren't willing to get rid of poor performers and terrible people.
Cons
I'd say that there's still more work to be done in diversity hiring. Reading over some of the past reviews, I'd definitely not describe Blend as "Toxic". Maybe it was that way once, but it isn't now. I actively work towards making Blend a more inclusive environment. I think many many many MANY of my co-workers do too.
Blend
Employee Review
"Engineering work at Blend Labs"
I worked at Blend full-time for less than a year
Pros
New office with lots of light. Free lunch and dinner, and a well stocked kitchen. Sit-stand desks and Herman Miller Aeron chairs.
Cons
Engineering is all about speed. No regard to quality whatsoever. Management pushes too aggressively for features, putting developers under excessive pressure. No knowledge sharing forums or tutorials or anything that helps engineers with professional development.
Blend Response
June 29, 2018 – Head of Engineering
Thank you for your feedback regarding Blend. I’d like to address the comments regarding quality and speed, as these have been growing focus areas for engineering this year. We believe quality doesn’t come at the price of speed. Engineering teams need to have strong guardrails (such as a strong test suite) and development practices to achieve both. Our engineering principles call for both. Admittedly, as the team scales in size, these principles are becoming harder to maintain without explicitly scheduling work to improve them. As a company, we are now doing just that! Over the past six months, we have implemented changes to our product development organization to ensure our quality bar is high as we iterate on features. At the highest level we have prioritized hardening our platform, improving our ability to test and monitor our systems, and developing tools to enable engineers to iterate more rapidly. In fact, quality of service and iteration speed are now company-level OKRs. We are also changing how we work: 1. A feature is not considered done until all tests are written in a repeatable fashion. 2. We have moved from manual regression testing to a fully automated test suite. 3. Product and engineering leads are now jointly accountable for the overall quality of development, allowing healthy discussions during sprint planning between new feature work and technology improvements. 4. Development of engineering tools focused on improving quality and iteration speed is explicitly advocated for and resourced during product planning, including metrics to show how the tools increase overall productivity. 5. We have identified areas that cannot fail in the product and are iterating and strengthening how they are tested. 6. Quality engineers are now embedded in product development groups as masters of an area of the business. Our customers demand quality, and we will continue to iterate and improve how we operate to maintain it. At Blend, we believe that we can have both speed and quality by demanding excellence of ourselves and how we work. Is there room for improvement? Definitely. As a team we should always be improving how we do things -- it’s one of our principles. --Chris Dunn, Head of Engineering
Other Employee Reviews
"Great company with great people!"
I have been working at Blend full-time for less than a year
Pros
Great people, strong leadership, good compensation, good work from home culture since Covid
Cons
None that I can think of.
"Blend has gone through a lot of positive change in the past year."
I have been working at Blend full-time for more than a year
Pros
Management has been shooken up a bit over the past year, and is fairly solid. Leadership came out openly and embraced Black Lives Matter and difficult discussions on race. Made a six figure donation as well. I think a year ago, that isn't a thing that would happen. The Covid response was swift, and decisive. We tested a few days before most companies were even thinking of moving to WFH here in the bay area. I think Salesforce had us beat by a week. And then we decided to extend it indefinitely. IT staff was definitely on top of things during Covid too. Made the WFH shift to home experience not as terrible. We were also given a $400 stipend to buy office related items, and they converted our catered lunches into a stipend as well to add to our paycheck to help out with any Covid related expenses (it's hard on parents!). And on top of that, added $50 for a home internet stipend. Blend is extremely forgiving for mistakes. I'm aware of a multi-thousand dollar loss we took on one person's bad judgment. That person still works here. That isn't to say that they aren't willing to get rid of poor performers and terrible people.
Cons
I'd say that there's still more work to be done in diversity hiring. Reading over some of the past reviews, I'd definitely not describe Blend as "Toxic". Maybe it was that way once, but it isn't now. I actively work towards making Blend a more inclusive environment. I think many many many MANY of my co-workers do too.
Discover more reviews about Blend.