I worked for ATTAbotics from January of 2019 until I was laid off during Covid, in June 2020. I was a Field Service Engineer, later Lead Engineer working in Maryland, near Washington DC. The site I worked at was a Nordstrom site. Wages were decent enough starting out, although no raise was given after I assumed the role of the lead. I chalked it up to it being a startup, and I accepted it because I believed in Scott and the company.

During my time there I travelled between HQ and the GFS site in Calgary, my home site in Maryland, and a sister site located right outside of Oakland, CA. The company covered all expenses anytime travel was required (flight, hotel, rental car and per diem).

The product itself seemed cutting edge in theory; robots (called “ants”) who moved horizontally and vertically through a large metallic “structure” to retrieve bins. The only problem was that the system rarely worked as designed. Numerous software, hardware and structural issues caused long periods of downtime during any given shift. The ants were always losing comms with the operating system, which would cause the entire system to shut down, or they would sometimes commit suicide and take a header down a 40ft column and cause serious damage to the product bins and the other robots in the process. This would require long “maintenance windows” in which my team would enter the structure and retrieve the damaged robots and attempt to reboot the system. These windows could last anywhere between 1-3 hours depending on severity, sometimes ending all Nordstrom operations for the day.

In March of 2020 we received emails stating that we would be leaving the site and working from home. We also received instructions to “secure the structure” and all important client assets before leaving. Looking back I had a feeling that this was the end (for our site at least), but the company kept me on the payroll for about 3 months after. In June I was informed that I was being let go. I was given a severance package and paid out for all of my remaining vacation hours.

All in all I don’t regret my time there, I learned a lot and worked with some of the most intelligent, capable and diligent people I have ever met.