CircleCI reviews

3.8

64% would recommend to a friend

(168 total reviews)
avatar

Jim Rose

66% approve of CEO

49% positive business outlook

CircleCI has an employee rating of 3.8 out of 5 stars, based on 168 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The CircleCI employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

168 reviews
1.0
Mar 31, 2021

Not a pleasant environment

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I’m struggling here. The San Francisco office is nice (great if you live on the West Coast, not so much if you live anywhere else in the world).

Cons

It has taken me a while to write this review as I still feel a little scarred about my experience at CircleCI. Like all organisations, a lot depends on your direct manager. Mine was very poor and clearly out of her depth. In general, I found this to be a common theme within engineering leadership. There was a lot of talk that contradicted action and this resulted in some fairly significant trust issues. I didn’t find the company vision to be clear or well thought through. Everything felt like winging it. And, interestingly, for a company that talks so much internally about diversity and inclusion, the reality felt quite the opposite. Again, this is largely down to having the wrong senior leaders in place. If you want to scale successfully, you’ve got to have the right people at the top. CircleCI doesn’t. The impact of this is constant turnover. The role I ended up doing was also very different from the one I signed up to and led to a significant lifestyle change that I would never have signed up for had I known what the role entailed. The company also brands itself as a remote first organisation. I personally found it to be incredibly SF focused. If you live anywhere else in the world, get read to feel like a second class citizen. If you’re interested in working at a startup, I highly recommend trying a different one.

avatar
CircleCI Response
5y
Hello, and thank you for taking the time to leave your feedback. While we are disappointed that this was your experience at CircleCI, we really do appreciate that you took time to address these issues. While I can't speak to your specific experience, I wanted to make sure I took time to emphasize our focus on diversity and inclusion at CircleCI, which includes our 4 ERGs (and growing) and continued training and workshops with regard to interviewing and identifying top talent in our hiring process. As we scale, the People Team is continuing to grow its capabilities and programs to bring stronger processes and leaders to the business and hope that we can create amazing employee experiences for everyone. I will be bringing this specific set of feedback to leaders, but if you have any specific feedback you'd like to bring or add please feel free to email chris.stpierre@circleci.com. Thank you again. Chris St. Pierre Senior Manager, Recruiting Operations
1.0
Mar 21, 2022

Lacks leadership

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

They do interviewing well, it’s a real strength - fast decision making, high band feedback to you as a candidate. The quarterly company wellness days are great. Company completely shuts down one day each quarter.

Cons

This was my worst experience at a job. It has really knocked my confidence and it has taken me some time to post this review. I really struggled at CircleCI, it was only during my farewell tour chats with peers that it came to light other people are struggling too. They have a retention problem and are seeing a drain of talent both new and old. I’ve seen this blamed on the “Great Resignation”. It’s not because of this - it’s because the compensation package is below market and the culture is toxic. The senior engineering leadership team is woefully inexperienced, out of their depth and really don’t add any value. They have created a fractured engineering department with no clear direction. In absence of such guidance teams are pulling to their own agenda. This creates a culture of teams fighting for their own priorities and investment, rather than pulling towards a common goal. They don’t recognize the problems in the department are those of their own making.

1.0
Mar 25, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Remote working, it's a job.

Cons

What was once a promising company has degenerated into a shambles full of arrogant managers who neither listen to their employees or even give the pretence of doing so. Is not a place for POC to work, or in fact anyone from what they consider to be a minority, which seems to include women according to their quite obvious bias'.

avatar
CircleCI Response
5y
Hello, and thank you for taking the time to leave your feedback. We are truly disappointed that this was your experience at CircleCI and want to ensure that though diversity is a topic of constant learning and improvement, we have been making strides to focus on it more and more in all of our work and our programs. Currently, we have 4 ERGs running to help with the often forgotten topic of inclusion and continue to evaluate those and other possible ERGs to create a more inclusive workplace. We have also been focusing efforts on our recruiting team to deliver more robust training developing stronger interview practices. We feel that this consistent and growing focus on our processes and overall programs will make CircleCI a continued great place to work. Thank you again for leaving your feedback. If you have any additional thoughts specific to your feedback to share that I could relay, please feel free to reach out to chris.stpierre@circleci.com. Chris St. Pierre Senior Manager, Recruiting Operations
Viewing 1 - 3 of 168 Reviews

Glassdoor has 174 CircleCI reviews submitted anonymously by CircleCI employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if CircleCI is right for you.