One of the worst life experiences I have ever had.
Pros
There are genuinely none. Even Cisco was pretty disappointing to work for in all honesty.
Cons
-The lack of training for management, and the general wholehearted embrace of mediocrity from the people that work in SF. -How manipulative / selfish most of the folks are in SF. Not a great place to work, not a great place to be for those looking at how good the Teamwork culture is (hint: It’s pretty trash.) -Culture is built around how much work you can get away with not doing. If you’re looking to genuinely grow and develop, keep looking for companies. -Very cliquey. If you are a woman, and there is an issue with a male colleague, just be prepared to have everything minimized and the blame all laid at your feet. It’s a grandiose example of victim blaming. As backwards as it sounds, it is just how the culture is here. You have have a few folks who would negate that, but fortunately there are always 2 sides to every story. -Very male dominated / frat style “bro” culture. Management doesn’t do much to shut it down and instead embraces it. Don’t believe any of the hype around meraki having a good culture and not tolerating sexism. -The overwhelming attitude of men at meraki (especially in sales) is that any woman is just ‘looking for a participation trophy’ and her work isn’t respected as much as a man’s work. Women in sales at meraki are usually given poor performing territories and then ridiculed when said territories don’t perform well, the bro managers will hook up other bros with better performing territories and leads. -It’s not about “being a girl in tech” and that oversimplification of things makes whoever said that sound pretty tone deaf. Nice. It’s about having a culture that doesn’t fit the typical Silicon Valley mould and embraces actual diversity. -While meraki does have a healthy participation trophy culture for the men, for women you have to work twice as hard to get half as far. Be prepared to see unqualified men promoted before you are as a woman, and be prepared for a majority of men at the office to feel like ‘they have a hard time around pretty women’. Yes. That was indeed said to me by a male colleague and I was pretty freaked out afterwards. -Bros cover for each other by moving the goalposts, you can’t say someone isn’t doing X,Y, and Z, if that metric is habitually moved to accommodate another guy’s dip in form. -Some women just want to show up to work and leave with a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day and not be held back by any bro simply because he “doesn’t like you” but that seems to not really be heard by anyone at meraki. -Prepare to never have your questions answered by management. An “ask me anything” is actually just your chance to ask legitimate questions and get a spin-doctored answer. Management doesn’t believe in accountability and you should learn to expect nothing from them if you aren’t a white male. -The sense of entitlement from most of the employees is truly disgusting. It’s hard to believe that some people act the way they do at that company. The SF office is pretty bad, but that entitlement is slowly making its way across the entire org. Some of the most conceited people are based out of SF though, but either way does any of that actually sound worthwhile? -meraki doesn’t provide equal pay for equal work, so be prepared to be underpaid as a woman as well.
