Think twice before accepting an offer - Anonymous employee Avalara Employee Review

In over 10 years of working across multiple companies, this was one of the most unstable and politically driven engineering environments I have experienced. The company appears heavily influenced by stack-ranking and performance-based exits, with layoffs or forced resignations happening regularly across teams. Employees can deliver significant work, receive positive feedback, and still suddenly face rating downgrades or pressure to resign without clear transparency. I worked extensively on infrastructure, observability, deployment automation, migration efforts, and reliability improvements under high-pressure timelines. Despite putting in strong ownership and long working hours to deliver critical initiatives, the overall culture did not feel consistently merit-driven or supportive. There were also noticeable gaps in operational maturity and engineering standards. Concerns around observability, monitoring quality, release management, and long-term reliability practices were often deprioritized in favor of short-term delivery pressure. Another major concern was the lack of transparency from leadership. Employees had very little visibility into the actual state of the company, long-term direction, or business health. Communication in all-hands meetings often remained very high level without giving employees real confidence or clarity. Frequent reorganizations, shifting priorities, and internal politics created a stressful and uncertain work environment. Attrition appeared consistently high, and long-term job stability felt weak across multiple teams. Overall, I would strongly advise candidates to evaluate other opportunities carefully before joining and consider this company only if they are fully comfortable with a highly political and unstable environment. * Stack-ranking culture * Frequent layoffs and forced exits * High attrition * Lack of transparency in performance evaluation * Constant organizational instability * Engineering quality often compromised for short-term delivery