Blossoming Enterprise, With Some Growing Pains - Senior Software Engineer DigitalOcean Employee Review

3.0
Jan 18, 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

DigitalOCean is a truly unique place to work. Very few companies get the opportunity to address such impactful and hyper-scalable markets. The scale of the problems being solved at DO, is quite remarkable, and as a recent IPO, this will only continue to increase. I enjoy working at DO, as it provides a remote-first, autonomous work environment, and the opportunity to have a direct and measurable impact while working with cutting edge technologies.

Cons

From an engineering point of view, DigitalOcean leaves a lot to be desired. I always hope that startup companies will prioritize technical excellence and strong system design paradigms within their software. Like many startups, DigitalOcean is playing catchup in these areas. Many long tenured engineers at the company lack a growth mindset, and are attached to old strategies that will not scale with the company. Management, however has prioritized quality and is willing to listen to new engineers and allocate resources to system improvements. In order for DigitalOcean to truly be a great place to work for Software Engineers, they will need to fully blossom into an engineering-centric tech company.

Explore other reviews about DigitalOcean

5.0
Mar 30, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Solid engineering team, seems to have found a niche and is working it hard.

Cons

Smaller company, so low in the prestige

2.0
May 18, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- lots of ownership - decent middle management - great teammates - learning a lot - older employees do tend to have competitive RSU grants and salaries

Cons

- tons of legacy systems (10+ years version of Ruby on Rails... 10+ years since some products or services were updated, 0 associated automation to help) - last 2y of leadership has brought on tons of reorgs & changes. Example - recommended PTO days quietly went down, got rid of lots of free snacks, anniversary gifts went down $100s of dollars, plenty of silent layoffs - Senior leadership is focused on 1 thing - getting the stock price up. Has no interest in supporting some of our legacy systems that can prop up new products. - new hires are not fitting into our culture. Inflated titles. Empire building. Awarded for submitting buggy AI Slop code. Encourage working on the weekends. Starting to get toxic.

2
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All