Compelling product with great engineers! - Avis employé Senior Software Engineering Manager Firstup

Fast-paced environment with talented, motivated people who genuinely care about the company's success and customers. There are opportunities to make a meaningful impact, take ownership, and grow professionally. Leadership is focused on innovation and continuous improvement, and employees are encouraged to contribute ideas and challenge the status quo. The culture is collaborative, supportive, and driven by results.

The pace can be demanding at times, and priorities may shift as the company continues to evolve and respond to market opportunities. Success requires adaptability and a willingness to embrace change, but that also creates opportunities to learn and grow.

There are still talented individuals trying to do good work, but they are increasingly constrained by leadership decisions and organizational instability.

The company has undergone a full leadership reset. New CEO, new C-suite, and layers of new, hand-picked management. However, there is still no clear, durable strategy. Instead of data-driven decision-making, leadership (notably at the CEO/CTO/CPO level and downstream management) operates heavily on narrative: what sounds good in a deck or all-hands matters more than what is actually working. This shows up in constant priority shifts, reactive execution, and a blanket push to force AI into everything, regardless of whether it solves real customer problems. Teams are left to reverse-engineer meaning from vague directives while being held accountable for outcomes they don’t control. Attrition is extremely high. Experienced employees are leaving in large numbers, and many teams have been significantly hollowed out. Rather than addressing root causes, leadership continues to backfill with aligned hires, reinforcing a culture where agreement is valued over competence. Compensation is below market in many cases, and benefits have been inconsistent and trending downward. Combined with the workload and instability, this creates a poor overall value proposition for employees. The most concerning issue is the shift toward managing optics instead of reality. Leadership set a target to raise the company’s Glassdoor score, and within months it jumped from ~2.3 to 3.1. At the same time, there has been a surge of anonymous 5-star reviews that are vague, overly polished, and often claim multi-year tenure, despite the well-known turnover. Meanwhile, detailed negative reviews (with roles and context) appear to be disappearing. Internally, this mirrors a broader cultural problem: perception is prioritized over truth. Managers focus on controlling narrative upward rather than addressing issues downward. Accountability is uneven—leaders avoid it, while ICs are expected to absorb the impact. There is also a growing pattern of behavior that raises serious concerns around professionalism and policy adherence. Employees who raise legitimate concerns or challenge leadership decisions risk being sidelined or pressured out. The safest path is to stay quiet, document everything, and protect yourself. The result is a culture of self-preservation, micromanagement, and internal politics. People advance by aligning with leadership narratives rather than delivering meaningful results.