Worst company I have ever worked for in my professional career.
Pros
Work from home, home office stipend, decent benefits, pay was OK, worked with some great colleagues who I am still in touch with.
Cons
Everything else. Everything. The company is so poorly run I don't even know where to start. My experience at Array was almost entirely negative. Disclaimer: My understanding is that the company's middle management has changed since I've been there, but the problems trickle down from the top, so I don't anticipate too much will change. That said, I obviously cannot speak to the current situation. These are my observations and opinions from my time at Array. The CEO of this company is simultaneously completely disconnected from the day-to-day operations, and at the same time insistent on jumping in whenever anything goes wrong to scold the rank and file employees and find a way to make them feel incompetent. First and foremost, he fancies himself an Engineer. He will not listen to your expertise. Your opinion does not seem to matter. He thinks he knows more than you, and he will demand that you execute on technical plans that are at best poorly thought out and at worst, ridiculous. Management will refuse to budge because they are following opinions that are ancient, incorrect, or both, and no amount of data or expert opinions can convince them otherwise. Because of this, the infrastructure is an absolute mess; a precariously balanced top spinning on the edge of a cliff. I would not be even a little bit surprised if I found out that the company had a major adverse technical event in the near future, because the culture invites poor decision making and negligence. Ernest attempts by knowledgeable employees to correct major problems are met with disdain or simply ignored because they do not toe the CEO's line. You do not get to have these conversations with upper management directly, by the way. You have them through the sycophantic middle management team - the most egregiously horrible management team I've seen in my lifetime - and that includes my time as a youngster working menial service jobs and soul-crushing call center roles. The management team (if you can even call them a team) was by far the worst I have ever encountered. Managers feigned care for their employees, but their entire goal appeared to be to please the CEO. They seemed to be afraid of him, if nothing else, and would never question his "expertise" or decisions under any circumstances. Instead, they would not-so-gently suggest that you do it, Of course - you could try, but he would rarely respond to you unless you broke something. They will work you to the bone. They will fire your colleagues for ridiculous reasons, not back fill their positions, and then expect you to do things like be on-call 100% of the time or handle workloads that are frankly impossible for one person to manage. There is no work life balance. They advertise but do not respect this. You might be hired with the understanding that you work a certain schedule. They will change this to expect you to be available all of the time if it suits them. Managers will tell you directly to your face how much they care about your opinions and well being, and then act on none of their words. When you provide a well thought out, well-presented technical plan for something, they will flat out not show it to the CEO if they think he won't agree, or they will pretend that they're on your side and then collapse like spineless jellyfish when they have to present a disagreeable idea to the higher-ups. Sometimes they will just try to convince you they're playing "devil's advocate", while what they are actually doing is trying to weasel out of talking to the higher-ups because they're afraid of rocking the boat. They were also essentially just functioning as extensions of the CEO - agreeing with all of his decisions regardless of their merit, and doing their best to try to get you to do the same. If you have professional integrity and care about the quality of your work, stay far, far away. In my time there, I was somehow represented by two different managers. Neither was an effective people manager, nor an effective technical manager. They did not really seem to like each other, and they both had completely different ideas about what I should be focusing my time on. I would sometimes ask my direct manager to address this, because my work was suffering. He would agree to do so, and then do nothing. This was also an environment that demanded excessive meetings for absolutely no reason. Half of my week was spent in meetings. Most of them were redundant, repetitive, full of silence, or otherwise completely pointless. The ones with a purpose often resulted in no decisions being made, and were a complete waste of time. Instead of having 40 hours to do actual work, I had half of that, and the rest was spent in the most useless meetings I have ever been a part of. They will not spend money on almost anything, no matter how necessary it may be. If you have a suggestion that costs money, or if your solution to a problem costs money, then forget it; It will almost certainly be shot down or it will take you months to implement. You may eventually get your budget once there is an emergency and there's no other option. At that point, you will be taking the brunt of the criticism for not doing this sooner. It should be noted, however, that they have no problem spending money on toys that the CEO wants to jam into the most important resources at the company and just kind of hope that they work, and will try to force you to "make it work" no matter how poor an idea it might be. Almost every colleague of mine that was competent was either let go for bizarre reasons, or left when they saw the writing on the wall. I worked with some fantastic people there, but those fantastic ones did not last. If can say anything about this, I can at least say that I am proud of my former colleagues for taking a stand and leaving such a poor situation on their own terms. I wish I had been wise enough to do the same. When I was unceremoniously laid off in the middle of a work day without so much as a face-to-face meeting or a phone call, I experienced a sense of relief that I can't begin to explain. This was an experience unlike anything I've had in my professional life. My time there demolished my mental health and put a sour taste in my mouth around working for startups. I have since been employed at another startup that is leaps and bounds better, but the Array experience will always nag in the back of mind. If you are looking at this company, I urge you to reconsider. Unless you're absolutely desperate for employment, take a pass. Find something else. For your own well-being, I implore you.
