Pros
The datasets were interesting — but even this has to be qualified, since many of them are based on models whose outputs were often bizarre and inexplicable. (There was a running thing where the role taxonomy model would categorize many blue-collar jobs as "burger chef" regardless of how accurate that was.) Still, contributing timely discourse on the labor market was definitely rewarding. You get to correspond with labor reporters at major outlets — not many roles offer that kind of opportunity.
Cons
I worked here for 6 months, before getting laid off - completely out of the blue, with no warning or prior performance review, because of "budget cuts". I've wondered for a while if it was me or them, but now, after having settled into a role at a more established firm — with real management, a great work-life balance, productive, challenging work, and a much higher salary — I can definitively say it was the latter.
So much about Revelio is just broken. By way of examples:
-When I started, it quickly became clear there had been no plan to onboard me. A few perfunctory sessions were thrown together, and then I was thrown into the deep end.
-Then, 2 weeks after starting, one of my supervisors reprimanded me in a one-on-one for not having published a newsletter yet. This was unhinged: I had still been getting password access to our systems at this point — never mind still learning the data. I later learned that other economists had gotten similarly reprimanded on bizarre grounds in their first weeks as well. My guess is that this is some new-age managerial technique that the management had learned on LinkedIn or at some Conference of Disruptors — a way to "break people in".
-This may have changed, but when I was there, what Revelio called "documentation" was closer to an archaeological dig — just piles of old code to sift through, and good luck figuring out how to get it to do what you needed. Most information was shared via Slack, so you'd mostly be searching through there.
-It was definitely a fuck-it-ship-it type of environment. New models would come out with inexplicable outputs, even as we were already struggling to explain the outputs of existing models to clients. A good encapsulation of how throwing data willy-nilly into a blackbox machine-learning model will not always yield insights.
-At one point the data engineers updated one of our core analytics tools. They put out a documentation/example notebook instructing on its use. This was great - until my code stopped working in the middle of a deliverable. I spent a long time looking for my mistake, waited for a response on the slack channel, and days later was told the syntax had been changed without any notification. In the intervening days, I was reamed out by the sales team, and my supervisor (publicly) for taking too long. This sort of thing happened often: Something wouldn't work, you'd work to figure out why, and then eventually find out someone else knew about the problem but hadn't told anybody.
-I had two immediate supervisors, and one of them was often just a disagreeable person. As an example, once we were co-working in the New York office, and they were revising a newsletter I'd written, and started naming problems out loud. I asked them to use the Google Doc to make comments, which would make more sense then talking through edits — and because I was in the middle of something else. They continued to name every problem out loud as they read through it, in spite of my continued requests to just use the doc. They seemed to think this was funny or something.
-There was no performance review, just vibes. (Again, this might have changed.)
-Ultimately, I was laid off, along with a data scientist, out of the blue. They mentioned budget cuts, but they literally hired more economists as I was leaving, so it's clear that either they had negotiated lower salaries with the new people, or thought they could produce better work, or both. Regardless, is that the type of place you want to be working? Do you want to be working with your neck on a swivel, wondering if someone in the next job market cycle can be replacing you at any moment? This is an utterly perverse workplace culture to inculcate. Indeed, when I was getting laid off, my supervisor told me not to feel bad, because the people who succeed at Revelio often do so "at the expense of their personal life". Not much to be said after that.