Open Source Engineering - Anonymous employee Linaro Employee Review

Small, intimate company. Friendly, helpful, and highly skilled people--I even liked human resources. Fully remote and great benefits. You get a ton of freedom so you NEED to be a self-starter there. There is no bureaucracy to hide behind.

Pay was slightly below industry standard for level of experience, but had good benefits to make up for it. Linaro largely contracts with other companies, so depending on your position, you are at the whim of the customers.

Amazing opportunities to focus on open source software projects that most companies would not properly support. Core teams staffed with strong engineers and peer relationships are good. Mostly remote employees, which is a pro if you're looking for that. From a technical point of view, this company is one of a kind. Their entire premise is to pick up the pieces of the FOSS community that aren't being properly addressed by competing for-profit companies. Only Google, Redhat, IBM and a few others afford such opportunities.

Management either doesn't have a plan or doesn't share it. Lied for years about being a non-profit when they were not. Membership model is unsustainable leading to concern and paranoia about the health of the business amongst the rank and file. CEO only seems to care about whatever pet project is being run by him, which changes annually. Zero career progression. Engineering roles are a job, not a career. Mgmt/director track seems very separate from engineering track. Prefer to fill new director and senior mgmt positions with outside hires. For an all-remote company, does not try to foster "watercooler" talk or other social necessities. Co-workers need a way to socialize outside of the context of code review or status update meetings. A #random Slack channel or really anything with emojis would be a good start.