Pros
I have read the reviews that people have posted lately on our company's Glassdoor. After the last few it's time to give an internal perspective on what Remine is from someone who is here now and still. I've been with Remine for over a year now so I have seen some of the transitions we've gone through. I marked our company as five stars because I still believe we are striving for better and care.
First like I wrote in the headline, we are not perfect. No company is. Remine is a startup, mistakes happen more often, but changes and fixes happen faster and quickly because we respond. Change is not easy for a lot of employees at Remine, some make it through, some don't. This causes unease for people but from a back seat perspective, it does make sense.
There are quite a few big pros (and cons that I will share) that I stand by despite all of the reviews, changes, or what other people have written on this website. First, the people at Remine are fantastic. I like coming into work everyday and seeing people. It's at a size where I know most everybody still. As an engineer, our culture has been evolving. We have had some people leave (both voluntarily and not) but our team has thrived. With some of our leadership in engineering moving on, I was worried about how we would be. I think to the credit of our teams and especially the CTO, we are in the best place we have ever been since I have started. Having some solidarity amongst each of us made us stronger and having a leader who stays with us to ensure the best outcomes given our situations at times really is pleasant.
We work hard on Engineering and it's not just hours. Our roadmaps are from the top down and we are asked to build products or features regardless of technical difficulty. Each time, we have always successfully done so and with that I think that makes us a real team. The team has sometimes been late on a delivery or partial on a feature. Most things that do get put out for users is what has been asked for.
Individual and team growth actually exists. This is something a lot of people who have less experience at Remine don't understand/see yet. I have worked at a few companies before and the reviews that say opportunities don't exist are completely inaccurate. We are lucky to have someone at the top of engineering who works through the management chain and individually to ensure people's concerns, desires, and growth tracks exist. This is always a topic at our all hands and I feel taken care of all the time. I hear my co-workers talk about how we are supported at work mostly but even outside.
The technology and code. One of the biggest compliments to the team is that we are truly forward thinking in our technology and in our jobs have the ability to architect, build, and learn new skills. This is indisputable, there is not one engineer currently at Remine who would disagree. You're not forced to do things one way, bring your idea, and if it is smart with team members agreeing it will happen. People get to learn new roles, challenge themselves often which allows for opportunities which is great.
The last post on Glassdoor about our CTO not "having your back" is definitely not true. I know through personal experience and hearing others that he goes out of his way for many conversations about career, life, tech and product stuff, and organization updates because he does care. It is our job to have our own backs, not just his or someone else.
Cons
I wrote this already, we are not perfect so let's discuss the cons. I don't like the word cons so I will say here is how Remine can improve and continue to work towards better.
There's an imbalance to the number of hours people are working in the office. Depending on the teams or individuals across Remine, there are a lot of people who do their minimum time and then just go home. It doesn't feel equal to hours sometimes and this creates a culture where people talk about other people consistently. If you are done with your work, walk over to a different team and ask if you can help.
I hear from other Remine people outside of Engineering that growth and feedback is lacking. It seems that people are getting upset that they do their job but do not receive compliments for efforts as much as they would like to. There is some drama when it comes to individuals and their roles, who should be doing what, why are some people involved, etc. I would suggest that this would be an area that the leadership team should look into as it is a solvable problem.
We are short on resources. The company has gone in multiple directions and new verticals and we don't have enough people to build. Remine needs to invest more in hiring people if we want to continue to support multiple products and build at the speed we're being asked to. It feels like we have multiple businesses in one business when we can just focus on one product and go deep.
The company is starting to act like a big company from a management perspective. Micromanagement and tasking downwards is a real thing at Remine. Some of this is good but people who are overlooked for their backgrounds and experience are not feeling valued. The leadership needs to be aware that the employees need to have room to speak, influence, and change or it will be hard to retain them. I don't experience this but I hear people talk this outside of work often.
Change is happening too quickly. We recently were told that we are moving offices in a few weeks when some of us just moved closer. It is somewhat disrespectful to not prepare employees for things like location changes when there is life impact. It is understood it was done for business and financial reasons, but there are financial impacts to your employees too.
We don't know why people were let go. Some of us understand because we work with that individual but it might help settle some uneasiness people have when it just "happens". Maybe we can be more communicative to help people understand so they can prevent an incident.
