Magic Leap : Part 1 : “The Magic is Gone“ Glass Door Reviews
This is Part 1 in a series of posts on Magic Leap. After $2.3B in investment and 7 years of secrecy, I’ve developed a sort of low key fascination with what might be happening down in Florida. Oddly, over time, I’ve become more interested in the story of the company and the people involved than the mystery device itself. A small part of me suspects that this particular journey might be more vividly remembered by history than the destination.
So…. in order to get it all out of my system, I’m going to do a bit of digging and see where it takes us. Therapy for me and hopefully something interesting for you.
Let’s start with the low hanging fruit.
Magic Leap requires NDAs to be be signed by anyone who has tried their hardware demo, I expect being a Magic Leap employee also comes with a hefty NDA agreement. I don’t know what the consequences are for breaking this particular NDA but they must be rather severe as many years have gone by and we’ve had surprising few leaks. Magic Leap makes Jobs era Apple look like an open book. These legal trappings s have always struck me as being at odds with the way Magic Leap tries to portray itself as a company: A place of fun, adventure, childlike wonder…. and… monstrous legal consequences.
I did some poking around Glassdoor.com and was pleased to see that Magic Leap has a rather active review section. Now, I must warn you the rest of this post is going to seem very negative, but I fear I’d only bore you with a series of reviews like this one:
Or this one….
Not a lot to be gleaned from this happy preening and there are only so many happy instances of of the word “Magical” that I can stand so…
What follows is a curated list of only the NEGATIVE reviews of Magic Leap. Why negative? Simply, they are appear to be far, far more interesting than glowing praise and appear to offer some genuine insight into the inner workings of the company.
There are currently 55 reviews on Glassdoor for Magic Leap and about a third are negative. Keep in mind, dear reader, it is well possible to post fake reviews on Glassdoor that are gushingly positive or horribly negative. I do however get the feeling that a lot of this is genuine feedback and that a pattern emerges among them.
Here are some of the standout quotes. [ spoiler warning! ]
Either management doesn’t appear to have a clue, or they are in on a very giant scam.
Bad intentions are hidden behind glittering messages of ethos
Did you notice everyone left? Do you ever want to finish?
Unless you’re drinking the koolaid you’ll quickly see how much of a facade this company is.
Company has zero strategy
Total lack of expertise, decision making, and accountability on senior leadership team. No one has the appropriate background for the role they’re in
You have to wonder where they get any sort of profit from. There’s existing tech already much past this level.
There seems to be a lot of people working on nothing or making little progress
Worried that nothing will come to fruition.
Saying your creative does not make you creative
Engineers who do not understand what is required to make their pretty drawings come to fruition i.e. unrealistic expectations.
I’ve included the reviews in full below, but here are some of the themes in case you are in a hurry. I’ve added numbers beside each point indicating how often it comes up among the reviews.
- Management keeps employees in the dark (2)
- Lack of focus (3)
- Indecisive Management (5)
- Office Politics (6)
- Poor Communication (6)
- Technology has fallen behind competition (2)
- Lack of transparency (2)
- Lack of empowerment (for employees) (4)
Overall, it would appear there is a lot of blame being directed towards the Management of the company. If these reviews are genuine, then something appears to be amiss. I will be taking a look into why that might be in Part 2 of this series. I suspect you’ll not need to wait very long for it.
As always, I welcome feedback, additional info, points of view or corrections. You can reach me at: @ID_R_McGregor or leave a comment below. Or both, who’s to stop you?
