Pros
- The culture is overwhelmingly positive and supportive. I can’t think of a single person I dislike working with. - Newer tech, very little legacy code to maintain. Engineers are given ownership over their own services and the freedom to change things as they need. - I’ve never worked over 40 hours in a week, and the CTO regularly reminds everyone not to work to the point of burnout. - SDLC works well, and our QA team is thorough. I've only had a single “drop everything and fix it now” issue in prod in over a year and even that was resolved in an hour. - Engineering leadership is humble and open to new ideas. They make changes based on feedback. They’re also genuinely good people. - Internal promotions are common. Most of our VPs and directors of engineering started out as engineers. - Your work is noticed. People celebrate each other’s wins all the time. During my performance review my boss remembered more details about what I had done over the last year than I did. I’ve never been put in a position where I had to fight to remind someone above me of the value I bring to the team.
Cons
- No 401k match. Senior leadership has said this is a priority for almost a year now. The excuses they've given for why this hasn't happened yet are weak. - No meaningful equity. It's a bit cringey when the CEO talks about building a rocket ship when that rocket ship only has a couple of seats. The size of everyone's equity is comically small relative to their contribution. - Salary bumps aren't keeping up with inflation. Adjusted for inflation, this is the first job I've had where the longer I work here the less money I make. - The flip side of the promotions being common is that we have a lot of higher level people (directors, VPs) who were ICs just a few years ago. This has exposed some growing pains as these people are learning on the job. Overall it's been pretty smooth but it's something to be aware of.