- As you might have read in the other reviews, there is a layer of politicking that happens throughout. Some hires or promotions are the results of favoritism in spite of very problematic qualities. While it's hearsay that nepotism exists, exec leadership has not been upfront in acknowledging it authentically and implementing processes to prevent (very public) hiring messes in the future. Sunlight is the best disinfectant - acknowledging that this is an issue (at least on the surface) is the first step to start solving it.
- Lack of psychological safety: transparency is lauded as a core value, but I've seen multiple instances of critical feedback loop back to hurt the employee. As a result, it becomes disadvantageous to your career to speak up against mainstream ideas or hold onto an unpopular opinion. CarGurus is a big company, and I'm sure there are managers who have been able to create this environment for their teams, but I've seen enough examples (especially in engineering) to notice a trend. For this reason alone, I've discouraged developers in my network from applying.
- Resistance to (large) change: it might be strange given the pro I listed above, but CarGurus likes to make incremental change even in areas when significant change is needed. The most salient example is the "closing the book" of going from 1 to 2 days WFH a month. Not only is leadership ignoring the needs of employees, but they're also causing CarGurus to lag behind peer tech companies. In practice, many managers ignore this anyway because it doesn't make sense. It makes one wonder if there's some weird incentive to dealerships to encourage more driving.
- Poor retention plans: for a company that likes to boast about its compensation, it's baffling that the retention bonuses are so low. Expect inflation-level (or heaven-forbid, 4%) "raises" for great performance with minimal-to-none stock refreshes. I'm not surprised that developer retention is so poor.
