BrowserStack Reviews

Where do I even begin: - Your interview is a joke. Your real work is 100% bug fixing. - Your appraisals are random and based on whether top management likes you or not. It has nothing to do with your work and performance. - How you move up the ladder is determined by the order - white skin, white accent, girl/woman, IIT/IIMs, others. Any permutation and combination of the 1st 3 will ensure that you get ESOPs and a big fat salary. If you fall into ‘Others' though, you might as well quit, instead of suffering, getting frustrated and then leaving with nothing to show for it. - There are NO experienced employees to learn from. You will have to teach yourself, or learn from other inexperienced employees. - The ENTIRE founding team has left the company in less than a year. Good, hard working people who spent years building the product got nothing in return and were either terminated or left out of frustration. - 4 years ago, we were told the company would grow from less than 10 to 100 in 3 months. After 4 years, the company has struggled to reach even 80 employees. - It doesn’t matter what you’ve contributed to the company or how long you’ve been there. You must remember that you don't matter. You are only there to make the founders richer. And if the founders favour you, you can claim to be a founding member too, even if you’ve only been there for a year or 2. - When asked for product feedback, if your feedback is not liked, you will receive emails saying 'Idiot, don't give stupid suggestions and use your brain'. This is how the founders address employees. - There is a no-lunch policy. You can't go out for lunch or take your team out for lunch, even if you've made a major release and want to celebrate. It's not allowed. You will be taken aside and reprimanded. Even while eating in the pantry, if the founders feel there is important work, you are expected to leave your lunch and do the work till it's fixed. - I have often heard the founders say 'If I am paying them money, they should work'. This means nights, weekends, weekdays, holidays or any other time the founders deem "necessary”. At one point, the founders even considered calling employees on weekends to take typing lessons to type and code faster, to ship faster. - No work/life balance AT ALL. How will 2 guys who have no social lives or social dynamic ever understand work/life balance? Having fun at work is frowned upon. There is not even a library for employees to read and learn from. Nothing. No skill development. Just sit and fix bugs all day. - You are expected to work at least 9 hours a day, but this could go up to 12-14 hours. And after this, if you show up late to work, your salary will be reduced. - You will work on ridiculous tasks that have no research, validation or thought. They are merely dreamed up by the founders, and you are expected to build it. And once you work on and build this ridiculous feature, it will either not go live, or you will have to rework it entirely because the founders suddenly feel like ‘it doesn'ts works’. - The company has no vision or plan for the future. The big goal is 'Make money'. That is the central driving force at BrowserStack. The goal is to make the founders and partners richer, while you, the slave, get tired, disrespected, frustrated and eventually burned out. - No matter what you build, even 50% will not go live, because the overall skill level of PMs is very very low. Inexperienced PMs who have NEVER coded or designed will instruct you on how to code and design. - Do not trust HR at all. They will lie to your face with sweet talk. None of your concerns really matter. Remember, you are only there to make the "founding partners" rich.

- Terrible Attrition - 2 directors leaving in the span of one month. 5+ employees leaving in just the first quarter of the current year. If that does not scream incompetence I don't know what does. - The company has a bad leader. Accountability is heavily discounted as you move up the ladder. While one mistake on your part results in you being reprimanded and looked with suspicion forever, the directors can make blatant mistakes that change the course of the entire company to a windfall and there is not so much as an apology let alone repercussions. - Supremely terrible people managers. Infact I don't think there is any people manager at all. Browserstack the business takes far more precedence over Browserstack the organization (if it takes any precedence at all). - Atrocious work environment. Imagine writing code while you are sitting in a fish market. Browserstack is worse. Cramming 8 people in a table that would more suit 4 is their idea of an "open culture" or a place where people are "accessible". - The working hours do not at all take into consideration having any sort of life beyond BS. Stay late, work when you reach home, work on the weekends. If there is work to be done, you better be doing it every living second of your life because that is all that is rewarded. - Bootlickers go far. Time after time people have been promoted and put into positions they don't deserve over better and much deserving employees because the one trait that holds a massive priority is flattery. To judge someones competence based on how closely he/she works with the Directors is the best way to show a finger to your most hardworking employees. And guess what happens when those employees realise it? (Hint- Attrition rate is very high) The amount of talent and skill that is wasted every single day because of vanity and pride is mind boggling. - Massive emotional drain. Every single employee who has spent a considerable time here is emotionally and mentally exhausted. And no one cares! If you cannot continue function at your peak all day every day you will be shown the door in a split second. It won't matter how much you have given to this company. It won't matter that you are going through a rough patch in your personal life. It won't matter that their unreasonable expectations from you cannot be humanly met. - You don't matter. The bottomline of every decision ever taken. The employee comes last. The employee holds no value. They are just a means to an end. And if they have to wear down and run over a few of them, they will. You will be put into a function you are not familiar with and not interested in and expected to work at your best because your master is telling you to.