sinking ship - Anonymous employee Espial Employee Review

Learning lots of new technology Good balance of work/life

Pay is mediocre Not much chance for mobility

Nice people, I genuinely enjoyed working with my teammates Relaxed environment, no need to burn out working crazy overtime

Management is very disorganized, I can relate to the reviewer who said management choices are made by throwing darts at a board. Frequent reorganizations and redirection, I never saw them stick with one strategy long enough to reasonably assess its effectiveness. Penny-wise and pound-foolish, this company is incredibly cheap, refuses to spend money on needed supplies and equipment, on business trips they require use of a rideshare service instead of renting a car even when the rental car would have worked out cheaper. Textbook example of "cargo cult" Agile, focused almost entirely on process despite preaching the Agile mantra of focus on shipping quality software rather than process and tools. Very little oversight or mentoring, flat organization with the intent being self organizing teams leaves very little room for mentoring and career growth. Huge amount of technical debt, bugs and tasks keep getting pushed out to future sprints. Very little QA effort with no comprehensive integration testing leads to poor quality product. Product and internal tool design decisions get passed down from upper management that doesn't actively use the products they are dictating the look and feel of, with complete disregard for the feedback from engineering. No titles, you were a senior engineer with your previous employer? Too bad, these titles do not exist here. Company self describes as a "mature startup" despite being around for some 20 years. Throughout this time they have achieved only enough success to avoid dying.