Challenging, fast-paced, innovative work + collaborative team - User Experience Designer Swimm Employee Review

Compensation is strong, with a high salary and good benefits. Perks like Cibus, gym room, and a fully equipped kitchen are genuinely nice. Some talented teammates who try their best despite the lack of structure.

The company recently fired multiple developers, including people who had only been there a few months. This is reportedly the second time such a wave of developer layoffs has happened. There is no real onboarding for developers. New hires are immediately put on large, complex tickets involving major changes to the codebase, even without proper context or support. The codebase was built by several past developers who are no longer with the company, leaving massive knowledge gaps and few people who truly understand the system. When raising concerns about the lack of onboarding and missing tools/documentation, leadership’s response was that “this is how startups operate today” and that senior developers are expected to figure everything out just by having access to the repository. This shows a misunderstanding of what productive engineering culture requires. Expectations are extremely high, but the environment provides no infrastructure—no documentation, no onboarding, unclear processes, and no technical leadership stability.

-Good coffee -Cool offices -Interesting product idea

-Poor strategy that always seems to change -Lack of accountability and constant finger-pointing -Equity that’s now worthless -Multiple layoffs -Buggy product that’s a nice-to-have -No hustle or sense of urgency -No appreciation or gratitude