Sift Reviews

Pros

CEO Vision, leadership The problem they are solving is really important and is a big issue for online commerce today Very talented engineering team

Cons

Typical flux with a startup Lot of scope for defining and implementing process for reliability and scalability.

Pros

-The company is well-structured and impressively scalable -Established cultural values that are sharpened consistently and applied to day-to-day work -The CEO cares and is ready to act on anything that requires his attention -The best recruiting and people operations’ team that I’ve been working with -Balanced top-down and bottom-up planning -Solid performance measurements (KPI’s / OKR’s) -Established communication...

Cons

-The team is challenged by fast growth and business expansion. Overall, these are good problems to solve -The management team needs to keep making good decisions while making them much faster

Pros

Very transparent & receptive leadership, empathetic and motivated teammates, very horizontal

Cons

Frequent management shifts, which is expected in hypergrowth

Pros

I think Sift Science is one of the rare startups that has all four of: - Interesting technical challenges (in machine learning, systems, product/design, etc.). - For a socially-useful product (fighting bad guys on the Internet). - With a great group of people and a great culture (kind, humble, collaborative). - A business that is doing well and showing strong growth. I have learned a huge amount at Sift so...

Cons

Growing pains are to be expected at any rapidly-growing startup, and this was particularly true at Sift Science in early-to-mid-2018: - There were a few changes in senior leadership. - There was friction between engineering teams in the new Seattle office and engineering teams in SF, which led to a few departures before management got on top of the problem. But I think Sift Science has made the right changes this...

Pros

Very strong sales and marketing team with bright senior leaders

Cons

While sales, marketing and the C-suite are smart and trying their best, the Engineering department is a mix of idealistic post docs and burnt out engineers looking for easy paychecks. The closer the engineers are to customer data, the more likely they'll have no concerns about how poorly they serve customers or secure customer data. Make no mistake, the unpatched infrastructure, lax organizational discipline, and poor...

Advice to Management

Your engineers take the path of least resistance to a solution, ignoring the needs of your customers. Your middle management supports this fully because they measure success as the scarce days where the infrastructure hasn't failed from scale or security issues. Your product is being run into the ground while endangering customers' data. Find someone who can better implement your visions for serving enterprise customers...

Pros

Best product in the space. Customers are slow to adapt to ML but when they do Sift is in a position to win market share. Sift is what you make it and for many, that's extremely rewarding. If you need a place with everything figured out, Sift isn't the answer. We're still very much a startup with more ups than downs but it's challenging and not for those not willing to change.

Cons

Simply put, some of the company doesn't work as hard as others which makes it hard to bring the right urgency and focus to the work we do. Some people at Sift rely on the status quo, referencing the way things have always been, getting defensive and not evolving with the companies' growth.

Advice to Management

Every management change you've made have been for the better. Keep the progress and change happening. I believe the best years of Sift are ahead, not behind us.

Pros

-exceptional leadership -strong product -happy customers -massive market opportunity

Cons

-young company competing in an established, hyper-competitive market -a lot of the learning here is "trial by fire," young & smart people figuring things out as they go. can be a good thing (certainly a lot of fun sometimes) but can also be draining

Advice to Management

-continue working to align engineering and go-to-market strategy. the feedback loop can be improved

Pros

Friendly group of people. Junior engineers can learn a lot in a short amount of time.

Cons

Senior engineers are ineffective so no room to grow as a more experienced engineer.