Pros
Bluebeam had one of the best HR departments I have ever experienced. This is no longer true because of 2 main things: 1) upper management laid off a large group; 2) their mismanagement of the company has caused others to move on. But what that group built mostly still lives on at bluebeam: • Great benefit plans with low employee costs • 401k matching • Snacks and beer/wine at the office • Continuing learning with access to Pluralsight, LinkedIn-Learning, Linux Academy, and a conference going budget • Community service group activities and PTO specific to doing community work • Recruiters that found some of the best coworkers I have ever worked with On top of that, customers love Revu. Working on something and then being able to connect with customers who love the software and use it all day every day makes some of the hard parts of the job worth it.
Kontras
Upper management (directors/VPs and C-suite) are ruining the products and the company, and they make going to work a dreaded chore. And their impact is widely felt because all decisions must go through them. • Most of (or maybe all) the people in upper management were hired from outside into that level • The current CTO is awful. He does not seem to understand technology or business unless his goal is actually to tank companies he works for. Go read the Glassdoor reviews for his previous employer, the now (seemingly) defunct AutoGravity to see his history • For a company that claims to make data-driven decisions, they have recently gone through 2 rounds of layoffs, and the data behind layoffs does not paint a good picture of the future • Bluebeam claims to be agile because they have scrum ceremonies, but engineers are net seeing work until the designs and specifications are completed and approved by upper management • If an employee has any criticisms, those are dismissed as being from someone who can’t handle change, and everyone is reminded to watch the latest propaganda video about how “buy in is not optional” and “Suffering is optional” • The CEO’s previous career was as a musician, and I think his hiring style is just looking for sycophantic groupies to stroke his ego – and this includes going through multiple consultant companies • Since all decisions go through upper management promotions are extremely political and somewhat luck based. If you work on something that get canceled or are making updates to/supporting existing products, you are not part of the new cool thing, and, therefore, must not be deserving of that promotion/raise • One of bluebeam’s new values is “develop trusted partnerships” but trust is based on openness and honesty – traits that are lacking in upper management. Couple examples: openness – the bonus structure has changed for 2021, but has not actually be revealed to employees yet; honesty – engineers laid off was explained as not having the skills for where the company is headed, but yet were told they could re-apply for the new openings (any programmers reading this: that’s right, the CTO believes that it’s easier to teach a new person the AEC industry than it is for an engineer to learn a new language/tech stack)
