- Small group of technical gatekeepers stifle outside innovation
- Poorly run projects of all sizes (seem to equate high pressure and high stress with high value)
- PTO is standard but the policies are rigid and culture around it is pessimistic
- Engineering management are generally undertrained and promoted from engineering. Not useful to employees.
- Deliberately below-market salaries
Bottom line, the more experienced you get, the worse time you'll have at Cvent. Unless you are adopted into the R&D/SRE group, your only option is to work harder, not smarter. Management has largely resorted to micromanaging and microtracking development metrics because of a company-wide focus on hard KPIs. They leaned in harder on this with the move to remote work.
The technical team lead role exists in name only. All decision-making power is in the hands of the product team and the engineering architects. Technical team leads are accountable for outcome without the power to change it. Any mid-level or above engineer that can produce gut check estimates can fill this role at Cvent. And yet, it is a mandatory title in the career path on the way to management or architecture.
Cvent tended to approach the problem of aging architecture by completely rewriting it, and then acting confused when the project inevitably took far longer than anyone except the senior engineers ever expected. This would lead to crunch lasting months or years. Neither management, customers, or the engineers were ever happy with this, but it made money.
