Poor management and awful attitude - Software Engineer Swimm Employee Review

Challenging, exciting, innovative product that is truly pushing the dev tools industry. Smart, friendly, collaborative colleagues who are all passionate about the product. Leadership is transparent and always open to feedback and suggestions. We work hard and fast, but also understand the balance between work and time off.

Like all startups there are growing pains with some processes needing polishing and some just not being defined yet. What is important to note is that leadership recognizes the gaps, is open to feedback, and actively making efforts to improve employees' happiness at the company.

Compensation is strong, with a high salary and good benefits. Perks like Cibus, gym room, and a fully equipped kitchen are genuinely nice. Some talented teammates who try their best despite the lack of structure.

The company recently fired multiple developers, including people who had only been there a few months. This is reportedly the second time such a wave of developer layoffs has happened. There is no real onboarding for developers. New hires are immediately put on large, complex tickets involving major changes to the codebase, even without proper context or support. The codebase was built by several past developers who are no longer with the company, leaving massive knowledge gaps and few people who truly understand the system. When raising concerns about the lack of onboarding and missing tools/documentation, leadership’s response was that “this is how startups operate today” and that senior developers are expected to figure everything out just by having access to the repository. This shows a misunderstanding of what productive engineering culture requires. Expectations are extremely high, but the environment provides no infrastructure—no documentation, no onboarding, unclear processes, and no technical leadership stability.