SeatGeek Reviews

Cons

There are some gaps when it comes to having experienced managers and leaders across the entire org. However, this is something that is actively being worked on and has improved recently. At times I think the company and various teams could be more focused.

Cons

- I wish I could give SG two sets of ratings, one for <75 headcount when actually operating like a startup, and one for afterwards. SG did great on that initial push, building a successful product, user base, and business strategy. However, because of that velocity and the lack of experience at mature orgs that many higher ups have, they did not focus early enough on critical self-health areas - management, career growth, mentorship, cross-team communication, product ownership, etc. These are all sorely lacking.
- Every company goes through growing pains, so the above might have been fine if that was it - we can learn and grow together, no worries. But in addition, there is a sense of denial about these problems that becomes very frustrating and hard to comprehend after you keep bringing up the same issues over and over again.
- Immature processes, lack of accountability - it shouldn't be weird to talk about things that are going poorly that you want to improve, but that's what it often feels like. See 'denial' above.
- It's something like 1% female (at best) on the engineering team, which is insane. Frustrating, because it's another example of something that could have been proactively course corrected.

Cons

- Lack of engineering management. SeatGeek does not have many engineering managers, and sometimes it is unclear who manages who within product/engineering.
- Severe lack of UX team: SeatGeek places UX decisions on the shoulders of Product Managers, Product Designers, and front-end developers. It is unclear who gets the final say in design decisions and how some design decisions are made in the first place.
- Poor communication between Product Design and Engineering.
- We have great product designers, but all of them work remotely, which may contribute to the poor communication. Half of the front-end development team is remote as well, and it does not seek like SeatGeek is making effort to bring product design or more of front-end engineering to the NYC office.
- Too much activity in Slack/communication seems more centered around Slack than in-person. This is very subjective though. The office is very quiet as a by-product, but subjectively speaking, I prefer more in-person communication.
- Lack of diversity (but it seems like they are very aware of this and working on it), especially in engineering (currently less than 5 female engineers in a department of 60.
- Lack of mentorship for junior software engineers, too much of a "learn everything on your own" mentality. Senior engineers are not expected (and often do not have time) to be mentors (junior engineers have to explicitly seek out time, and it sometimes feel like it's not very encouraged). I personally don't think SeatGeek is ready to take on any junior engineers based on the stage of growth that it is currently at and the amount of resources available.
- SeatGeek is definitely experiencing lots of growing pains, and takes on more than it can chew sometimes.

Cons

The pay is pretty low for Portland, especially for the high caliber work that is expected and executed. The perks are geared toward the NYC office more so than the Portland office.

Cons

Company is scaling so structure seems a bit in flux

Cons

Lots of company reorganization and change

Cons

- Unclear expectations
- Manipulative management
- Unrealistic goals
- Failure to adjust with repeated failures
- Bro culture
- Almost no women engineers
- Poor knowledge sharing
- No shared product vision

Cons

KPI-driven: This isn't inherently a bad thing, but sometimes our company is too focused on reaching our OKRs and that ends up hindering progress that we should have been making.

Cons

Culture can sometimes be sports heavy for those not interested in that space

Cons

Typical growing pains of a startup becoming a growth company. Nothing major!