Toxic leadership - avoid! - Senior Software Engineer M1 Employee Review

1.0
Feb 29, 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Fellow engineers, designers, and (most) immediate managers are great people

Cons

Senior leadership is extremely toxic and dishonest - There are lots of opportunities to give feedback, but such feedback will be immediately discarded in favor of short-term profit decisions. - Many people were hired as remote-only, but this was backtracked because the CEO changed his mind on a whim. CEO does not care about forcing employees to be exposed to Covid. - CEO openly praised greed as a virtue during a recent company-wide meeting, bragged about profits and runway, then a week later laid off ~38 people, including high-performing engineers. - Senior management keeps trying "fun" exercises like summer camp-themed team bandana colors, but it just ends up feeling like a poorly masked way to micromanage and hyper-optimize teams. (The modern version of a pizza party party, without the pizza.)

Explore other reviews about M1

5.0
Aug 7, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Strong engineering culture. Very smart and capable engineers. Lots of Scala nerds.

Cons

Recent layoffs to improve bottom line.

4.0
Apr 20, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

A great group of people to work with who cares about the team and culture. Pay was a little above average.

Cons

Some questionable company choices led to layoffs in 2024. In my opinion M1 should have doubled down on the brokerage offerings more than they did to attract customers with M1's core differentiator (investing pies).

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