Pros
– Unlimited PTO – Supportive, friendly peers to learn a great deal from – Learning stipend – Good work/life balance – 401(k) match – Equity – Lunch on Fridays +$18 weekly on the platform – Peer-level willingness to try new processes, collaborate – Dedicated research team
Cons
This company has made smart acquisitions and partnerships as a first-mover, which increase its revenue, value, and appeal. But inside, it was incredibly damaging for those of us who wanted to collaborate and solve for real problems beneath leaders who didn’t know how or want to do either of those things. Despite high turnover, an inability to deliver basic features after spending years on them, re-building features on the same platform, and knowledge of bullying and harassment, the company has not made changes in leadership where it matters and instead has gone through its regular 1.5-year cadence of re-org and shifting to hide the damage (and protect those responsible because they have trouble hiring to replace them). There is zero accountability because the ability to safely give feedback about your boss no longer exists. Execs only seek input from directors, a few of which are sycophants and prone to gossip. In Product (product, ux research, design), many leaders are devoid of soft skills, don’t foster growth, and don’t understand employees’ skill sets. Some seemed to have no qualifications for their position, whatsoever. Initially I empathized over the pressure they faced and their learning curve as the company scaled rapidly. But, true personalities came out with that pressure. At least three leaders hid insecurities by: not letting their teams make decisions, hiding their day-to-day activities or withholding information, preventing team discussion by pushing conversation into 1:1s, blaming their team for their own backfired decisions, creating false feedback as a punishment mechanism, and firing or running out those who challenged them. It is the luck of the draw if you join. There are a few good leaders who don’t breed this toxicity. In my opinion, these leaders were still too passive to call out the damage being done by others. Problems exist beyond leadership. PM waste endless hours filing regression bugs (there is no real QA team). Simple changes are blocked by cross-team dysfunction. Finance often blocked delivery due to meaningless metrics. The Design org has struggled as subservient to Product leadership, who easily micro-manage design work because of the top-down approach and a lack of advocacy for design as an equal contributor. Positions for senior design leadership remain unfilled for years. Many designers and product people never saw work delivered, anyway, due to a shortage of engineers and inability of the company to prioritize.