Where do we begin?
If I were to concisely define Relativity’s main problem, it would be a lack of quality in leadership. Behind their perfect, diversity-balanced, color-coordinated advertising copy is a fundamental deficit of hard skills, creativity, and competence that goes all the way to the top.
Glassdoor reviews here that characterize Relativity as an architectural disaster are not far from the truth. All signs point to the fact that they have lost the technology arms race to the likes of Logikcull and Everlaw. As talented an entrepreneur as he is, Andrew hasn’t been an engineer for a very long time, but for many years he maintained the CTO role. It is no secret that Relativity’s ancient core codebase doesn’t work very well in modern cloud infrastructure, and it is in large part due to Andrew’s meddling, haphazard decision-making, constant changes of direction, cutting corners, and taking liberties with product quality. Rather than modernize the architecture, he kept throwing more bodies at problems, and over the last five or so years doubled the size of the Product Development department and the number of engineering teams with hires out of college (not to mention contractors all over the globe). Andrew has yet to learn to accept the people who can stand up to him: In my time at Relativity, I saw at least two strong technologists who could have provided the badly needed leadership fired or forced out.
In daily life, Relativity’s quality problems translate into overtime and stress. Engineering teams have to assign people for on-call duty to deal with production issues, which is no fun if you have a family. And bi-weekly product demos where Andrew can rip into your work in front of the whole company are a miserable ordeal for tech leads, development managers, and PMs alike. All that said, as a far as quality of life and workplace culture, Product Development is by far the healthiest part of Relativity. Things are a lot worse in other departments.
Case in point: Support organization. It started as a call center and never evolved out of it. The culture is predicated on control, obedience, and butt kissing, making it a sad oppressive mess. Stay away. That includes positions in support, training, and documentation.
Human Resources: In my opinion, the most problematic area. The review process is hopelessly broken because it is largely based on the manager’s subjective evaluation of how well you adhere to “core values”; never mind your material contributions to the business. Disputing an unfair review or brining up bad management is a lost cause. Hiring process is broken too, they don’t know what to do with good fortune when it falls in their lap: I have seen a number of times when they went on months’ long candidate searches while already having supremely qualified candidates in-house. The “Referral Madness” is exactly that – madness. And then there’s just a plain lack of basic oversight: “Values” are great, but how about providing leadership by gently introducing some common-sense standards of conduct and tempering office shenanigans? That is what one would expect from Human Resources. Instead, there is grandstanding while engaging in retaliation, playing politics, and covering up the problems. With HR practices like that, the place is going nowhere. And in the “Me Too” era, it could well be ripe for scandal and lawsuits. Hopefully no one gets hurt.
