Toxic Culture - Anonymous employee HARVEY Employee Review

I’ve really enjoyed working on Infrastructure and Platform at Harvey. Building AI infrastructure is challenging, fast-moving, and incredibly exciting. The scope and complexity of problems are much larger than what I’ve experienced at other companies, and there is a real opportunity to make a meaningful impact. Pros High ownership and scope: The scope of engineering work is exceptionally high, often exceeding what you would find at many AI labs. Engineers have the opportunity to own critical systems and solve impactful problems. Strong upside: If Harvey continues to execute well, there is significant financial upside from being part of a company at this stage. Pioneer in Legal AI: Harvey is helping define the Legal AI space, which makes the work both exciting and meaningful. Interesting technical problems: The infrastructure challenges are genuinely unique — building reliable, scalable systems around AI workloads is some of the most interesting work I’ve done. Approachable technical leadership: The technical leadership team is one of Harvey’s biggest strengths. They are highly approachable, technically strong, and consistently make time to help engineers. They are actively involved in solving problems, providing guidance, and creating an environment where engineers can do their best work.

Cons Competition from foundation model companies: The AI landscape moves extremely quickly, and there is always pressure from foundation model companies to move up the stack. Continued differentiation will be important. Infrastructure maturity: The infra stack is still maturing. Some systems have grown quickly and accumulated technical debt, leading to reliability challenges. The good news is that technical leadership recognizes this and is actively working to improve the foundations.

- Team is talented and competent across the board - Work-life balance can be strong, though it varies a lot by manager/team - High-trust environment day to day - Coworkers are generally kind and easy to work with

- A quiet but rapidly growing culture of bonding over shared frustration has taken hold among employees - awfully draining, and doesn't seem to be on leadership's radar - Large pay discrepancies across the same titles/roles - Leadership culture rewards a tight inner circle; promotions and flexibility are much easier to come by if you're in it - Outside that circle, policies are enforced rigidly with little room for exceptions - Minor issues are often escalated as make-or-break, keeping the team in a low-grade state of anxiety - Priorities shift quickly and without much warning - Highly ego-driven culture, which can make collaboration harder