Pros
Decent pay. Unlimited PTO. Still a few awesome people there, who haven’t realized they’re on a sinking ship.
Kontras
After nearly five years at Minerva Project, it's been disheartening to witness the steady decline in leadership quality, authenticity, team ownership, and best practices that were once valued here. Minerva was a fun, innovative, collaborative place in the beginning, where you were supported by managers and it felt like people genuinely cared. But that all faded under the weight of disorganized management and senior leadership, unfulfilled commitments, and the conversion to a secretive, toxic work environment. Leadership consistently delayed or denied necessary resources for areas other than engineering, from backfilling critical roles to career progression. Communication about product and business decisions were often opaque, leaving our team unsure of our direction and unable to perform at our best. Perhaps most frustrating was been the drastic shift away from established industry practices that foster innovation—like user research, testing and iterative design. Our ability to engage in these critical processes was severely restricted, stifling creativity and reducing our output to a series of untested assumptions. This approach not only undermined the quality of our work but also demoralized those eager to contribute meaningfully. The phrase “people are promoted to the level of their incompetence” rings very true here, and my team mates and I spent an embarrassing amount of time strategizing how to work around this incompetence. Unfortunately, this was rarely successful and reduced morale and agency even further - teammates stopped saying no and began to focus on not rocking the boat. I refused to stop pointing out the leaks in the boat, and for this I was terminated without warning (after delivering the majority of project I had been working on for a year). While not illegal, the way I was treated in the final months and minutes of my time there was despicable. To leadership, I encourage you to take a look at Minerva’s values - particularly #thoughtful, #human, and #authentic - and ask if you and your managers are truly exhibiting them (spoiler:they are not). To those considering a role here, I'd caution that the vibrant, supporting, innovative environment advertised may not align with reality, which is marked by a notable decline in both strategic direction and respect for design as a discipline. Just make sure you know what you’re getting in to.