Snap Software Engineer Reviews

Pros

everyone is nice and the culture is progressive

Cons

not sure but it would be team dependent

Pros

They are willing to hire because they are in need of help. Most ML “leadership” positions are saturated with “leaders” who simply rode the coattails of larger tech companies. Their experience is limited in terms of ranking, product sense, and critical thinking skills, and their experience is often not so applicable to Snapchat’s problems. They also lack basic knowledge of data foundations and rely on repurposing and leeching on to the work of IC’s who have been at the company for longer. If you’re willing to let others take credit for the work that you did, in exchange for $10k bonus at the end of the year, kudos to you.

Cons

There’s not much opportunity to grow. Again, the company hiring has favored hiring leadership externally anytime they have the cash for it. Internal promotion opportunities are few and hard earned for the big pool of L4’s. In addition, engineers performance are tied to product performance, which is atypical of engineering expectations, so many shortcuts have been taken over the years. The ones who have tried to fix problems and genuinely help have been ruthlessly leeched on, given poor performance reviews for “lack of impact”, and let go by the wave of FANG middle managers who jumped ship.

Pros

Learned a lot, worked closely with mentor and manager and got to test and ship real code

Cons

Works like a big tech company but overall great place

Pros

good benefits good work life balance

Cons

not innovating as much anymore

Pros

- There was a company top-up of stock when there was a large decrease in stock value. This was really great. However, this topup was for future stock grants over the coming year, not the ones that folks were already given (of course meant as an incentive for employees stay for at least a year) - Stock vests on a monthly basis - Interesting work. The problems that I work on are interesting and solutions to them have significant impact to the product inside of Snapchat that I work on - Good manager and skip manager. Though this is of course team dependent. I feel that my manager has really done a lot to set their direct reports up for success and ensure that they're working on something valuable for the company. I'm not micromanaged. - Smart and kind employees. Have been here almost a year and haven't met anyone I thought was toxic or - Good development tools. I personally feel that - Solid total compensation, between salary, RSUs, and an annual bonus. Benefits are great too. We'll see if they stay that way. Hopefully they do - Free snacks and drinks daily. Lunch served on Tuesdays and Thursdays. $60 meal card for food for the rest of the week at your discretion ($80 in bay area) - Gym membership reimbursement ($150 / quarter) - Cell phone reimbursement ($50 / month) - Decent work life balance. On most days, I work 8 hours and can log off. Sometimes 10 hour days if there's urgency involved - I recommend working here if you are able to be okay with the bullet points listed out in the Cons section. Regarding upper management (of any company), always remember that actions speak louder than words and to read the fine print

Cons

- Uncertain future for the company. Company is taking massive hits as it loses market share to competitors (e.g. Instagram and TikTok) for ad revenue, even before the ad market started to dry up. - Return to Office to be enacted again for 4 days a week. This applies even if you are the only person on your team in a particular location. There was a lot of push back on this, but it was disregarded by upper management. There's been a large investment into leasing out office space worldwide, as part of this. Personally, there's more frustration around how this decision was made (wasn't data driven, at least not publicly) then what the decision was - Quarterly "lightweight" performance reviews to be enacted starting in Q2 2023. Unfortunately, these are no longer include self-reviews, but just peer-reviews and your immediate manager's opinions. This makes it really important that you have a good relationship with your manager. Even my immediate manager doesn't like this - Starting in Q2 2023, there will be a restructuring of compensation in order to cut employee costs. It's changing from a system where everyone is rewarded with bonuses to only being the top performers (~top 25% or so) - The executives dismiss opinions and input from others. It's incredibly demoralizing to hear rebuts such as "there can be multiple truths", "morale is a choice", and "suspend your disbelief and skepticism about going back to work into an office" - Layoffs in August 2023 were demoralizing. With flat revenue, I wouldn't be surprised if there are more layoffs or other ways to cut headcount/costs - Compensation is largely stock once you hit L4. With a volatile stock like Snapchat, this is definitely something to pay attention to. Make sure to take profits every once in a while

Pros

good work-life balance, good culture, great benefits

Cons

No cons so far I can think of

Pros

You get rewarded for your hard work

Cons

- Everyone is supper motivated and competitive. It’s difficult to stand out. - promotions are very difficult

Pros

Great pay, smart people, very flexible, good projects, free lunch in office

Cons

bad WLB, mandatory return to office 4 days a week, weak executives with no vision, no bonuses for top performers

Pros

- Good compensation ignoring stock dip - Ownership depending on if you like having depth over breadth

Cons

- Constant re-prioritization of projects - poor wlb depending on team

Pros

Competitive base salary, stock price is currently in the single digits so if you join now there's a chance for upside, good benefits, many coworkers are genuinely kind and helpful people.

Cons

Incompetent senior leadership team that takes no responsibility for their decisions that have now impacted the revenue of the business and the plummeting stock price, no work/life balance, total 180 on supporting remote work and then flip flopping a few months later to require RTO 4 days/week with insufficient notice, review/bonus structure is laughable, all hands meetings are heavily scripted and used to gaslight employees.