Big promises, big disappointments. - Engineer Soloshot Employee Review

2.0
Feb 28, 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Small fun and friendly team. The product concept is great and definitely a hot button with customers. A lot of great ideas, but its sad that they might not make it.

Cons

They've hired friends, family and kids straight out of school - possibly to keep costs down ? This makes the office environment awkward and unprofessional. They don't do funding rounds or pitches like other startups. It seems like all they do is file patents for stuff they have not yet created in hopes to sell out at some point. For a small company they've spent their money opening up shop in too many locations at once and spreading out too early. Not everyone is treated equally or given the same amounts of work freedom - some people just work from home while others are held to a strict 8-7 standard ('stuff picks up around 6 PM' apparently), some work on the other side of the country and are rarely seen around if at all. Most of the development is contracted out and they fail to take control of their own product from their contractors. This frustrates internal engineers since they have to play a game of 'catch-up'. Some teams refuse to adopt common development practices like sprints and standups and are poorly managed. The people who have ended up in high positions dont even code - it seems like they were just put there due to prevailing friendships. To fix poor design and product conception, engineers from a specific domain are set on tasks that are so far outside their scope that they might as well be in arts and crafts class. The engineers and design team work hard and try their best to pick up the slack where ever they can by jumping in without complaining. The engineering areas are lacklustre at best. They celebrate the fact that they have tables made of doors (WTF ??!) and the pantry is just soo filthy. Every month they end up apologizing to their customers for not being able to deliver despite a year long back log of pre-orders. Sometimes they even laugh at their customers and their responses (I feel this is in really poor taste)

Explore other reviews about Soloshot

5.0
Sep 11, 2016
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Dynamic Environment and great product

Cons

Aggressive time line for product introduction

1
2.0
May 8, 2016
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

While working at SOLOSHOT, I met some amazingly talented people in their profession. They are working on pretty creative technology. They offer a couple perks to the job which may make it worthwhile. They still have a startup mentality, so you can feel the energy from those that you work with.

Cons

My first impression was that they would be an exciting company to work for. However, though most of the team is quite talented, they came across as quite cold. New to the Bay Area, they have a long ways to go before they realize how to treat employees better. A few of the executives and seniors in the company are quite amazing people. But there are some who won't even acknowledge or address those without an executive or senior title--incredibly arrogant and narcissistic. They also claim to make most of their decisions on data, but the majority of the decisions they made while I was there was purely biased--lacking a researched approach. Furthermore, because it is a startup (even after three years), I found that some people were in charge of things that they knew little about and were very adamant about decisions they made despite the fact that they were hired me for my experience and expertise. Lastly, they were very poor at communication. They withheld a lot of information and never conveyed specifics about what they wanted. When deadlines came around, they were never happy and then added to the scope of the project.

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