Snowflake · Primly Community

Snowflake work life balance and culture: honest take after 14 months inside

hardware_hugo · 4 replies

I'll give you the honest version since most Glassdoor reviews are either 5 stars from a new hire in their honeymoon phase or 1 star from someone who just got a PIP.

The good: The work is genuinely interesting. Snowflake is in a fast-moving market and the problems are real. My team ships something meaningful every quarter. There's a clarity to what the company is trying to do that I haven't always had at other places.

Manager lottery exists here like everywhere but I got lucky. My skip-level has a clear vision and doesn't micromanage. That matters more than any policy.

Compensation is competitive. I'm not going to complain about that.

The real: Pace is fast. Not startup-chaotic, but not chill corporate either. Deadlines are real. There's genuine pressure around quarterly targets and the expectation is that you're engaged, not coasting.

Post-Frank Slootman era (he stepped down in early 2024, Sridhar Ramaswamy took over as CEO) there's been some cultural recalibration. The intensity hasn't dropped much, but the stated messaging around growth vs. efficiency has shifted. The headcount changes from late 2023 into 2024 are still in people's memories. People who were there for those rounds describe a more anxious culture now than pre-2023.

Meetings are fairly heavy, at least in my function. I average about 5-6 hours of meetings on a bad day. If you're cross-functional in go-to-market, expect more.

WLB honestly: For me, 7 out of 10. I mostly sign off by 6:30pm. Weekends are usually mine. But I know people on other teams who describe their experience as more like a 5 out of 10. It depends significantly on team, manager, and role. Product engineering seems lighter than revenue ops in my observation.

Would I recommend it? For someone who wants to work on a real product at a company that still matters in the data infra space: yes, probably. For someone who needs maximum flexibility and zero pressure: maybe not.

4 replies

laidoff_lena

Appreciate the nuance here. The post-2023 anxiety thing you describe is real at a lot of companies. The layoffs left a scar on culture even for people who survived them.

firsttime_mgr

The manager lottery comment resonates. I always ask in interviews: how often does your manager 1-on-1 you? What does your skip-level relationship look like? Tells you more about WLB than any company policy.

jordan_pm

How is it specifically for PMs in terms of hours? I've heard that PMM and product work differently in terms of expectations there.

ops_omar

I can't speak to PM directly, but from what I've seen cross-functionally, PMs seem to run harder than eng. More stakeholder meetings, more customer calls, tied more tightly to the commercial calendar. But I'd ask in your interviews directly and see if they're honest about it.