Avantages
- I had a core group of coworkers who genuinely cared about me and were willing to help when I needed it. - I felt like our community was very warm and excited to hear that I worked there. There is a lot of goodwill out there and it feels good when you run into it. - As a remote employee, I had a good work/life balance. I was empowered to set my own schedule and take time off as needed.
Inconvénients
- Chef suffers from stale leadership. Product strategy, engineering execution, and go-to-market are failing due to executives who do not have experience performing at the required levels to continue growth, and have been there too long to look at problems creatively. - Apathetic management hurts the standards for hiring and promotion. Constant turnover and recruitment targets have lowered the bar for culture fit and capability, and have moved forward with candidates even when teams voiced concerns. You will need to manage your own growth and learning, and there is no clear path to promotion even when you invest the time to improve. - Teams remain siloed and decisions are made that impact you without your input. Constant re-orgs negatively affect customer relationships and software quality. - As many have said, Chef is not what it used to be. There was a familial culture and a focus on growing the business by delivering solid products to customers. Unfortunately, increasing amounts of venture capital spent on over-hiring and a lavish office put pressure on engineering and sales to deliver more, leading to burnout. - Regarding the suggestion that “mediocrity, laziness” play any part in people’s reviews: that is a shallow opinion and not fair to other’s experiences. Many high performers have left due to limited career growth and exhaustion. Chef is well past start-up phase; it is an 8-year old company with 5 rounds of funding operating in a market (configuration management) that has easily entered maturity.