I’m (almost) at the offer stage with a company that I really like. The engineers that I’ve spoken with are great, the work sounds interesting, and the industry is exciting. My experience with the recruiter (from the company) has been wanting. They had email problems, it takes a long time to get responses, and they told me an offer was coming more than a week ago. I had to reach out to find out what was going on with the offer (it’s still coming)
I feel like once I get in the engineering group, things will be fine, but the delays with the recruiter are making me have second thoughts about what otherwise was a very exciting prospect.
Is slow communication indicative of bad communication throughout the company, or just a fluke? Should I be worried?
If it comes through as expected, great, you can evaluate your options at that point. Until then, you should hope for the best, but plan for the worst, these things can and do get cut off at any time, nothing is final until your first day.
This is indicative of bureaucracy, not bad communication. This advice applies to any kind of business transaction / negotiation like buying a house, car, whatever, talk is good, but it doesn't mean anything and can't be relied upon until its in writing and money changes hands.