Second Spectrum Reviews

Second Spectrum is not a place for actionable career growth. Hard work is rewarded by more work. When the company realizes they can get more out of you, you will now be working all hours of the day supporting the operation to deliver data for live games that happen in multiple time zones throughout the day. MASSIVE disconnect in vision where the company is heading. Leadership wants to stay R&D while the company is in the middle of operating at scale 3 of the largest sports leagues in the world. The focus for operating the company priorities were all over the map from 2019-2020. There are serious growing pains with managing the scale of the operation and during the last 1-2 years the culture of the company has greatly suffered for it. This disconnect really limits the level of innovation since there is a paradigm shift in the company. Do we continue to invest in R&D or spend resources supporting existing infrastructure and clients? It's very hard to do both efficiently and effectively. Some decisions are made in a vacuum, it's hard to keep everyone on the same page. This often leads to one minute you've been working on something for many months and the next it has been completely scrapped. When the Pandemic hit, Second Spectrum took the opportunity to restructure the company in a way that felt like it had actually been planned for several months (pre Covid)- Layoffs, more work for employees who remained, no compensation review (it has now been close to two years since I received a raise), no ideal way to grow into a different project/role, no mentorship. Second Spectrum uses the phrase "Second Spectrum is our people" all the time, however, that phrase feels empty and hollow now. When you lay off hard workers due to "budget cuts," but keep others who have habitually underperformed, it sends a very contradicting message that makes the staff question how seriously the execs hold the company values. There is little to no accountability once you've earned favorability with executive leadership. Select employees are known to take advantage of staff members who work around the clock (engineering and operations related). When it comes to career growth the ceiling is very low. If you are working on a project, you can be the domain expert and the company will still view you as replaceable. This is a company run by engineers so there are pros and cons to that. The pro is you often get to work on projects led and managed by engineers so everyone knows the ins/outs of the project very well. This can help make meetings very efficient and keeps everyone aligned. This also allows you to build and deliver quickly. A large con is that because the company is run by engineers at the top, it comes off that other business sectors such as sales, finance, HR, operations, etc. are not valued as much. Of course great software products are the bread and butter of the company, but if you don't support and trust the employees you have invested in on the business operations/financial/ HR standpoints, then the company will never reach its full potential.

Leadership doesn’t value anybody’s opinion except their own, causing them to micromanage everything. They also talk over and dismiss women’s opinions despite the women being experts in their field. A meeting is required for any discussion of any size, causing 8 hours of meetings a day. The company doesn’t look farther ahead than whatever the co-founders are thinking about, so constantly changing tasks while ignoring customer needs. Expected to work all hours of the day and have to cater to LA time zone for everything, where work can’t begin earlier than 9am or else the co-founder becomes visibly angry in meetings.