Negative Experience at Black Rifle Coffee Company, Brand & Commercial Technology Department
Pros
BRCC boasts the strongest culture and ethos I've ever encountered. The individual contributors on the team was supportive of one another, and I gained valuable experience in my field. The company offers a chance to give back to the veteran and first responder community. Working with fellow veterans provides a unique opportunity to collaborate with many veterans post-service. This is the coolest company I've worked for in a decade. Employees enjoy a free coffee subscription.
Cons
Management on this team has fired 4 people inside a year. The engineering team's processes led to severe dysfunction. While software engineers in tech, especially on either coast, typically expect Agile Scrum project management, this team transitioned from unrecognizable project management process to a strict Agile Scrum process, only to consider abandoning it due to supposed insufficient velocity. On one occasion, management advised us not to take any PTO and to work nights and weekends until we met the project deadline months away. Management worked nights and weekends consistently, despite advising against it, pushing code past midnight without any pull request reviews consistently. Often the next morning code was broken. Engineering leadership, from team management level, exhibited toxic, command and control-style leadership, lacking adherence to servant leadership philosophy. There was no budget for continuing education like you would expect elsewhere for getting credentialed on the "fill in the blank" stack. Compensation was underwhelming, with salaries 20% below market value. Remote employee salaries were based on Salt Lake City rates, which are among the lowest in the nation for software engineering. I was denied a reasonable salary increase 1.3 years into the position, based on salaries where I live , even after accepting a 20% cut at the start of employment. In almost a year and a half, I received no bonus, and there was no mention of any bonus rate in my contract. Beware of recruiters making promises. Management-level communication of expectations was lacking; I was blindsided by write-ups claiming underperformance, while 1-on-1s with the management never mentioned any issues related to underperformance. I was written up twice without prior warning. I was terminated after expressing concerns about what I perceived as harassment by management, who took over a sprint body of work, micromanaging without communication and refactoring my code, which broke my follow-on PRs. On the same day, during our sprint retrospective ceremony, I addressed my disappointment with management. Although this is typically a safe space, management issued a written disciplinary action that day. I refused to sign it and was terminated without HR present on the call. I was told not to "request mast" (as the military says) and discuss issues with management to higher-ups. However, given the treatment I was experiencing, it's unclear why anyone would be discouraged from doing so. Overall, my experience at BRCC was positive working with all the other individual contributors, but toxic management ruined the whole experience for me.
