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by rjkennedy98 3014 days ago
My experience also was that they have a huge snob factor there. I was doing consulting for a database company when I visited their office. In the meeting I was announced as someone when knew our company's product, to which one of the people responded "Oh, I think we already know how <product> works". I wanted to respond, you guys have no f-ing clue how it works, but couldn't for decorum reasons.
2 comments
brian_cunnie 3014 days ago
[disclaimer: I work for Pivotal]

I'm sorry you had such a disheartening experience at Pivotal; it's uncommon — in general, Pivotal people tend to be very warm and kind, and not snobby at all.

When I joined Pivotal six (seven?) years ago, I assumed that I'd stay maybe two years, tops, but the people were nice, and that's what has kept me here.

Also, the comment you heard ("Oh I think we already know how [Database X] works") may have not intended to be snobby but rather a nod to one of the developers there: if the database company was InfluxDB, and the office you visited was the NYC office, then there's a good chance that they were referring to one of the Pivotal developers, John, who was one of the early developers of InfluxDB along with Paul Dix and Todd Persen. [1]

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[1] https://www.influxdata.com/blog/influxdb-1-0-ga-released-a-r...

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taurath 3014 days ago
Yeah its pretty much crazyland over there - they 100% believe their own kool-aid, and evangelize their processes like its the second coming.
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ryanong 3014 days ago
Ex-Pivot here. The kool-aid was amazing. Would drink again.

Best communicators I have ever worked with.

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RandallBrown 3014 days ago
Having worked with Pivots in their SF office and in smaller satellite offices, the Kool-aid isn't nearly as strong away from their main offices.

But, I do really like a lot of their processes. Pair programming isn't for everyone, but I think it's a better way of building software. Now that I'm not doing it full time, I constantly miss the benefits of it.

Their strict schedule is kinda nice for work life balance, but it also means working with them was a little strange. Our whole team would go out for happy hour at 5, but they would stay until 6, even with almost nobody else in the office.

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