Don't work here - Software Engineer Brighterion Employee Review

1.0
Mar 7, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Office is in a good location. Lunch is catered a few times a week. Paychecks clear. There's a couple of young but smart people on the data science team.

Cons

Quote from a new employee: “I think I made a mistake coming here." Brighterion now has ads all over the Bay Area, claiming to be "the" machine learning company. They claim Brighterion is the best AI company in the world, because it's powered by "Mindsuite", an AI toolkit that supposedly took "over 500 man-years to make". If you believe the claims you're going to be disappointed. The whole time I worked there I asked people what iPrevent and MindSuite do, and eventually realized that even the most senior employees didn’t understand how it works or what it’s supposed to do at all. The consensus among the employees is that Brighterion doesn’t have a secret sauce; it’s powered by a small team of data scientists that build fraud-detection models by hand using everyday machine learning techniques. Other complaints: -Most people at the office don’t talk to each other. -The CEO tells his employees to make up fake positive reviews on Glassdoor. -Terrible, terrible management. Expect no supervision and little communication. Expect power plays, like being ignored when you walk into your boss’s office or being yelled at publicly in meetings. -Computers are completely disconnected from the internet. -Expect to work with old technology: 32-bit Java 6, Spring, xslt, ant scripts. Everything is done with broken in-house technology, including things like xml parsing. -My desk was extremely grubby: it had a trap that filled with years of skin and hair. -Salaries are well below wages for the area.

Explore other reviews about Brighterion

5.0
Sep 9, 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I had the privilege of working with incredibly smart people and I will be forever grateful to the founder for giving me my first job out of college during the financial crisis. Working at Brighterion allowed me to become a succesful software engineer.

Cons

None. I will let that to the people who spend their limited energy with cynisme and criticism.

10
5.0
Nov 12, 2015
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I can honestly say that life at Brighterion just keeps getting better. While the work is challenging, I am grateful that I work in an environment that makes me want to push myself. Given the nature of our business, our clients expect and deserve only the best. Those who can't work at the highest level usually don't last but fortunately Brighterion hires well so you are surrounded by co-workers who challenge each other. While our work is largely under the radar (NDAs prevent us from publicly discussing clients), we work with hundreds of institutions worldwide ranging from homeland security projects to financial fraud for the world's largest banks, e-commerce, and credit card companies. This exposure allows me to apply my skillset across multiple channels. I don't think I could have gotten the experience I am getting at Brighterion had I chosen to join any of the other, much larger, Bay Area tech companies - and they provide all the same bennies - lunches, awesome healthcare, 401K and health club membership at the Embarcadero YMCA just across the street. Brighterion is at the cutting edge of artificial intelligence and machine learning and I am proud to be right there at the front lines with such an innovative and cutting edge company.

Cons

Be prepared to bring your "A" game. In all honesty, I can't think of any right now but I'll circle back later with an update if I can think of any.

8
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