Good for juniors, experienced devs should look elsewhere - Senior Software Engineer DraftKings Employee Review

3.0
1 Jan 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

* DraftKings gives lots of opportunities for engineers to take on large challenges, in both technical planning and implementation. This is ideal for early-career growth. The promotion process from software engineer to senior software engineer is straightforward and happens relatively quickly for talented engineers. * The people you work with day-to-day are talented and kind, and collaboration between teams is pretty good as well. * Unlimited PTO is easy to take with no formal approval process. * DraftKings makes an effort to move engineers to different teams when their products become de-prioritized, instead of doing layoffs (although there have been some layoffs, they were certainly less than the ones at other tech companies in recent years).

Cons

* You're given opportunity to gain valuable skills, but your compensation will not rise accordingly. Base pay does not really change beyond promotions, with yearly raises being <2% which will not keep up with inflation. You are expected to be on call for week-long 24/7 shifts fairly regularly and respond within 10 minutes to any pages, which I found to be a pretty big detriment to my personal life (all without additional compensation). Expect to do live monitoring on weekends and evenings for big sports events, also unpaid. Once you have experience, it's pretty easy to find a better paying job with fewer oncall expectations outside of DraftKings. * Product sets deadlines before technical planning is done, meaning engineers are frequently having to step up and be 'heroes' to get features out in time. This leads to a lot of tech debt and production bugs, which further worsens on call for engineers. * DraftKings is increasingly shifting to metrics to measure engineer success, meaning the number of 'points' of tickets you do will be compared against your peers. Managers do not take into account whether you were on vacation or your contributions towards helping your teammates get their tickets across the board. * Can be a bit of a boy's club. My immediate team was always welcoming but women engineers who have to collaborate with other teams are often patronized or dismissed. Expect to repeat yourself a few times if you're a woman who has to talk to one of the all-male engineering teams. * Senior management seems lacking -- mostly they seem to ignore employee feedback and always show up right before product launches to demand changes that should have been suggested much earlier in the planning process (demanding that features previously agreed to be non-mvp get added last minute pre-launch, changing the product name/color scheme).

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DraftKings Response
2y
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and experiences at DraftKings. We're pleased to hear that you find DraftKings to be a place that provides ample opportunities for engineers to take on challenging projects and foster career growth. Additionally, it's great to know that you value the collaborative environment with your teammates. On the other hand, we understand and acknowledge the concerns you've raised regarding compensation, on-call expectations, and the challenges related to product deadlines. Your feedback about the potential impact on work-life balance is particularly important. We are continuously evaluating our compensation structure and policies to ensure they align with the well-being of our team members. The points you've raised about the challenges women engineers face are concerning. We are looking closely into this and raising these concerns with the leadership team. We do not tolerate the behaviors you pointed out and remain committed to fostering an inclusive and supportive workplace for everyone at DraftKings. We continue to evaluate feedback to improve communication channels and ensure employee feedback is heard and implemented where possible. Your feedback is important to us, and we appreciate your honesty regarding the positive aspects and the areas where we can improve.

Explore other reviews about DraftKings

5.0
7 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Truly a great company to work for. Personal development is a huge focus and this is a company that you will truly grow at. Having worked or had friends that worked at at a most of the big Boston tech companies, can confidently say DK will both treat you better and help you become more than any of the others

Cons

A lot will be expected of you and the company does emphasize performance. But it will give you the support to get it

2.0
28 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The pros about this place is that if you want a quiet area to work when you do work there out of 3 days out of the week that they have you work there. At least that's what it was when I worked there I don't know if they've changed it. Then you work 2 days at home. It's very quiet. Most the time there is nobody there. They will train you and help you but you will eventually have to be able to do it on your own.

Cons

If you switch over to departments don't depend on the company keeping you. If you mess up. The company was literally going through a buyout with the lottery company when I was working there and everything was crashing. So I got let go because there were a lot of errors and the system that they upgraded to was worse than the one that we worked on. So basically if anything happens with the systems just make sure that you know what you're doing and that you catch up on everything.

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