Pros
- The product is innovative, sales will continue to soar - People are very excited about their fast growth - They pay at the high end of the market
Cons
- They replaced the value "Teamwork makes the dream work" with Company First - When they had Simon Sinek as a guest speaker, he shared that employees should come first because they ultimately serve the customer - the CEO disagreed - There is rarely any recognition of employees, only talk about product and sales - Almost no women in leadership, huge problems with diversity - CPO has no influence, there is nepotism on the People teams which fuels inefficiency and incompetence - There is so much insecurity on the People team because they know they're not taken seriously, that it paralyzes any effort - Conversations about trust, empathy, and psychological safety are actively discouraged - Leadership struggles to articulate its vision and mission, doesn't bring people along and there are no feedback mechanisms built in - Top down micromanagement is the norm, they hire "smart people" but don't let them do their jobs (I've heard this exact thing from dozens of people at different levels across many teams) - No decision making authority below the VP line - I've learned essentially nothing while working at Databricks, and if anything will have to unlearn bad behaviors such as not giving feedback or speaking up when I see something wrong because I have been reprimanded in the past