No longer a leader in technology - Lead Engineer Xero Employee Review

1.0
4 Sept 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Great people, really helpful and human. - Good WFH policy with lots of perks when you come into the office. - Good product that most customers really appreciate using. - Great to get experience with multiple areas of software development

Cons

- Lack of strong technology leadership and direction, no CTO and years of focus on product means changes have been mostly cosmetic and additive. - Changing role expectations after reset, instead of change management or supporting employees through this transition, company policy seems to be to use performance management to achieve compliance. - Engineers are expected to take on role of scrum master, product owner, delivery manager, release manager, devops, QA, architect, document, risk manage, organise and configure after hours support, etc. while the multiple layers of management on top are also constantly asking questions or to do work for them. - Complex and old code with lots of tech debt and little time to do coding or learn the codebases (see above point). - Moving away from teams assigned to a product, to teams working on next highest priority project, which could be in a different domain, and most domains are already full of tech debt with little consistency.

Explore other reviews about Xero

5.0
24 Apr 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great culture and solid benefits

Cons

Could be a bit chaotic at times

1
1.0
30 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Xero has a great product and a lot of very passionate employees who work very hard for their customers.

Cons

The executive leadership at Xero is creating a toxic, backstabbing culture that promotes yes-men at the expense of honest dialogue. It's impossible to make decisions at the company, and multiple rounds of layoffs are leaving all employees shell shocked and fearful. Marketing teams are under-resourced while more demands are constantly being placed on teams to do more. When constraints are communicated, employees are blamed for them, rather that listened to. Multiple colleagues have said the same thing. Additionally, management has instituted a 'rank and yank' policy where everyone is graded on a forced curve, where the bottom quarter are immediately put on a PIP.

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