Featurespace Reviews

Featurespace are by far the worst company I’ve had the displeasure to work with. My first week was the most awful time I ever spent somewhere, and I was already seeking alternative employment after just one month in the role. Despite my best efforts to get to know my manager, he avoided talking to me and left me to read documentation in lieu of training. I raised the problem with him, his manager and HR, only to be met with patronising comments and solutions that didn’t have any positive results. They admitted later down the line that they completely failed me as a new employee. As I started working more and more with customers, I realised how much lying was going on: making promises to clients for solutions that didn’t exist or couldn’t be achieved, and project managers left to pick up the pieces to try and retain the business. I witnessed the CEO herself in a meeting with a prominent customer, trying to dig herself out of the hole they had created with this displeased customer. I left after a short time with Featurespace and provided ample feedback of my poor experience with them, which I doubt who ever be acted upon. The only positive is that I made a few good friends there, and all of them are now either leaving Featurespace for the same reasons, or considering resigning. No surprise Featurespace are advertising so much for jobs: all project managers are practically gone or working their notice, after either a very short time spent there, or simply so angry at how things are going.

Featurespace is a quagmire of outdated and poorly architected software, technical debt, poorly defined or understood processes, toxic client relationships, poor communication, and career stagnation. Featurespace positions itself as a cutting-edge machine learning technology company. The reality is that the majority of projects do not involve machine learning. The technology is made up of cobbled together, outdated components which are often EOL, making it hard to implement and support, and even more challenging to stand behind to clients. Management claims that Featurespace is a company with a good culture; however, the only detectable culture is passing the responsibility for a task to the next silo along. Communication and knowledge management are worse than poor, with senior management refusing to write announcements down. Finding information is a grim treasure hunt because not only is documentation fractured and incomplete, but also information on a given topic can live in one of several different pieces of software (not to mention that one of those places is an in-house tool of low-quality). Management does not know what a healthy relationship with a client looks like - they capitulate to unreasonable requests instead of having difficult conversations that involve the word "no". This means that project teams cannot steer projects towards a healthy way of working, because they are undermined by senior management if they push back. Career and salary progression is minimal to non-existent. "Progression" in many roles is being given a small title and pay bump with no additional responsibilities or learning opportunities. Featurespace occasionally recognises some of its problems and tries to address them, but almost invariably fails to implement quality change for one reason or another. Layoffs were made earlier this year and I'd put money on there being more to come.