Civil Maps Reviews

I hope you find your peace. Working at Civil Maps is hard. We are rapidly growing and the dynamics might seem overwhelming. Any fast growing organization has to reorganize itself rapidly. For example the org structure at Google when the company first started changed several times in one year. You cannot onboard people and expect them to stay in one position if you expect the company to grow and scale. Companies have to promote individuals or play to a person's strengths while continuously organizing themselves to handle the fast growth, customer demand and market dynamics. There are several methodologies on this topic. Kaizen is one of them; continuous process improvement is essential to get a better outcome. The theory behind Kaizen is to stop the process when you find friction, make amends to it and optimize it until the whole process feels like a rocket ship. Resisting change will result in perpetuation of stale processes with high friction, where people have to spend more effort for simple tasks. At Civil Maps we highly encourage process driven innovation. Everyone at Civil Maps has fought for a seat at the table and they are building value in the company. Management is working with each individual helping them identify how they can improve. I don’t necessarily see this feedback as something bad. The general public trusts us to do the job right and do it to perfection. We are building mission critical safety software wherein the passenger is entrusting their lives to the autonomous vehicle technology we develop. We are legally obligated to scrutinize every single line of code by NHTSA. This company is not meant for everyone and we are happy that you graduated to a new organization where that might not be a requirement. We encourage unhappy employees to leave, it is more healthy for them and healthy for the company. We don't wonder why people quit. We are perfectly aware of each individuals capacity and their want for growth at Civil Maps and we are actively building an ecosystem where they are setup for success. Prospective employees: The nature of the problem is such that we request employees to deliver 110% of their effort. Civil Maps is a hard place to get a job and it's a fast pace of work is indeed very tough. It is not right for everyone. We thrive on individuals who focus on personal growth and career advancement. Our goal is to mold the best most coveted engineers because they were trained at Civil Maps. We see the growth of our employees as #1 priority for our company’s success. We find that many of our ex-employees who graduated or didn’t make the cut go on to find well paying jobs in other companies because of the skills and training they procured at Civil Maps. Responses to statements: Execs say "if you don't like the culture here, then just leave." Do the top execs wonder why so many people quit? Yes, we expect people to fit into the culture rather than stay and be unhappy. It is in everyone's best interest to part ways if there is too much friction. "They are still trying to solve the same tech problems after more than a year. Other AV companies already have better products. Other companies can map hundreds of miles per week. Why not Civil Maps?" We have one of the fastest and most cost effective map generation engines in the world. That's why customers come to us. Without it we wouldn't be able to justify our existence. Fingerprinting and low cost compute has disrupted the market and our customers are raving about it. Not sure why you seem to think otherwise. "Hiring process is not professional. One candidate was left waiting in a room by himself for over an hour while people debated what to do with the candidate. That is a red flag that they don't have their act together." We have a great hiring process. The candidate was waiting on their final job offer and they received one. Not sure why that is bad, it saves them a trip and a multiple hour commute to come back to the office. Additionally, it's the interviewers responsibility to coordinate with the candidates, and the software engineer's responsibility to focus on their work. Not sure why this was a concern for you to highlight...

If the executives incorporated all the feedback of the employees and managers; every decision would be consensus based and the company would move at a snail's pace. Most successful startups have strong leadership consolidation that helps them navigate around various perils efficiently along its journey of growth. The biggest advantage a startup has against a large organization is it's ability to be agile and outpace the larger incumbent players. Remember, startups have limited runway; so they need to make decisions quickly for fast execution. Not every person can be on boarded to agree with every decision. When you join a company, make sure you agree with the leader's vision of the alternate future. In most cases, the leaders should and will have the full authority to steer the ship. Working at Civil Maps is challenging and you will pick up skills and experience that make you a better employee. We are not apologetic for making you a valuable employee. At Civil Maps; we believe in transparency, process innovation, humility and candid feedback. Transparency means that we talk about issues when we need to improve. We strongly encourage that we exercise process innovation. In the company's core values; the process innovation helps us improve things rapidly. But in order for processes to improve; critical candid feedback needs to be given in a timely manner to the relative stake holders; those stake holders need to internalize this feedback and put into action changes that improves the organization's execution. If you feel like this critical feedback during retrospectives is akin to public humiliation; then we are not the right fit for you. We need employees who have the humility to learn and grow. We give people hard challenging work where they have to exercise critical thinking and be ok working out of their comfort zone. We are building a trail blazing technology that requires the best of people. Employees might make the mistake of focusing too much time and attention on thinking only about the solutions or how much effort they are putting in. We strongly encourage that all employees and managers to also focus on the problem statement to see if there are possible avenues for problem simplification. Doing this allows the scope of work to be drastically reduced while still delivering the same or greater value to the company. At Civil Maps. we do think that growth comes from being out of your comfort zone. Feeling at ease and doing repeated tasks rarely leads to any personal growth. We strive to provide a healthy mix of work that is routine and challenging. If you feel anxious about this; then perhaps a lifestyle business is a better fit for your priorities. A VC funded company striving to create a market is not the best place for people who prioritize routine. We do not think there are any WRONG or RIGHT personal priorities; only priorities that are CONDUCIVE or ADD FRICTION to a company's progress. Not all personalities are a fit for what we need. We try really hard to filter for this when we interview; however we might not do a good job in some cases. We apologize that you felt that this requirement of high performance caused you anxiety. Like we said above, there are no RIGHT or WRONG priorities. Just ones that are CONDUCIVE and ones that ADD FRICTION. If you feel like quitting makes you win at life, then we are not CONDUCIVE for your priorities. A company is essentially a group of people working shoulder to shoulder towards a common goal to make a vision / dream come true. When trying to actualize this vision; if the work feels arduous or beyond your ability to perform; take a step back see if you can get help or coaching. 99% of the time you will be surprised how much better you feel if you ask for help or get a second opinion. That being said, as an employee; you should always prioritize your happiness and focus on your priorities. This is why we encourage people who are unhappy to part ways amicably. Regarding the sexist / racist comments; this statement really hurts the credibility of your post. At Civil Maps, we strongly discourage sexist / racist comments. We emphasize maturity, diversity, and humility. We have a diverse interdisciplinary group of individuals from various ethnic backgrounds and from various socio-economic backgrounds; who have come together to solve very important problems in the autonomous vehicle space. This statement is purely false. In summary, we strongly encourage you to change your behavior on how you treat your prior employer who might have spent significant resources training you to gain valuable skills in the market; creating a strong demand for your employment. If anything we provided you a career growth trajectory that was fast, challenging and if you kept up could have been a once in a lifetime experience. Civil Maps is not for everyone and we wish you have a great future on your journey.