The previous reviews that are negative are not exaggerating. The recent positive ones are very misleading and are probably mandated.
CEO is not inspiring. I get founded this company and gets emotional but he needs to move on.
The new CTO probably wants RTO because he seems to dislike zoom and needs people around him.
I have mixed feelings about the CTOs direct reports. Some managers are good. Current manager is the the type to throw you under the bus.
Code quality standards are very low. Some senior engineers have never worked in proper large scale projects. I think a lot of people join with the intention to use Handshake as a proving ground to move on to something better.
Documentation is confusing, you basically search Slack.
The push to only hire in SF for the core teams is dumb and probably driven by fear. Who ever had that idea is probably trying to show the CEO “look we are here working hard”.
Wild West when it comes to planning. Some teams do it well, others just do it by word of mouth and random Google docs (guess jira doesn’t exist).
Since joining over a year ago I have never felt stability and worried about being laid off constantly.