Pros
There is nothing good about VSCO that doesn't exist in abundance at another company. Lots of reviews on here talk about the catered lunches and the office space. That stuff is table stakes in the Bay Area tech milieu. Good, but not special. Who knows if these things will even continue to exist, post-COVID.
Cons
VSCO is a deeply broken company with problems at every layer. It's a place with no product vision, committed to undercutting their own success in service of an ill-defined mission that doesn't seem to serve anyone except the egos of the founders. If you are interested in developing your career, you'd be better suited working just about anywhere else in the Bay. If you are interested in coasting, and flattering the egos of upper leadership while collecting a paycheck, this may be the place for you. VSCO's product process is a cycle: hire leaders, scramble to make some kind of plan, make a mess, half launch an MVP, abandon the plan, get new leaders, ad infinitum. The senior management in Product churns out pretty frequently, and none of them really have a vision for the company beyond doing half baked versions of things that more successful social media apps have already nailed and moved on from. There's been a rotating cast of senior engineering leaders who can never seem to get a handle on how to make the organization functional. Things take a long time to go from idea to execution, and it does not seem like there is much thought given to quality. It seems like every week some engineer ships something that cataclysmically breaks some crucial workflow in the app for all users. It's really hard to figure out who's responsible for what, because they are constantly re organizing and shuffling people from team to team, seemingly in the hopes that THIS time, maybe, finally, if they just move desks around in exactly the right way, they'll be able to ship something worthwhile. The business leaders don't seem to be very good at anything other than spending money on multi-year contracts for services that won't get used, and drawing charts with lines that go down. They pride themselves on transparency, but the general vibe from them is "everything is great, we have things under control" until the day it isn't and they're firing people and blaming it on external factors. The pattern as I see it is, seeing early signs of growth, hiring like crazy, spending money on vanity office spaces all over the country, acquiring companies, and then having to wind the clock back in a very destructive fashion when everyone realizes there was no underlying plan for any of this stuff, and no ability to execute. Through all of this, the company has always had the same top guys. The C suite. Joel Flory and Greg Lutze. Greg always comes off like he's stoned, despite also seeming like a guy who has never smoked weed in his entire life. Greg is in charge of Design. Design leadership seems to have never looked at another mobile app. There is a deep seated organizational need to reinvent the wheel for things that have obvious and well established solutions. The history of product design at VSCO is littered with ideas so apparently ingenious that nobody will ever try them ever again. They love to talk about "establishing systems" that never materialize. Who knows what they spend all day doing. The CEO, Joel, seems mostly motivated by flattery and collecting Cool Black Friends. He loves building out office spaces that make him look cool in architectural digests. The contracts for these often go to the construction company owned by Joel's daddy. My guess is that when all of this is over, the elder Mr. Flory will probably have made more money off of VSCO than any of its investors ever will. The company lucks into events that take it off life support (search "VSCO Girl"), but ultimately Joel does not know what to do when handed that opportunity. Go watch any interview with this man. Word salad. Not even the competent word salad that you get from a real Valley jerk. At some point, the investors needed to realize that the repeated history of failure is the responsibility of this guy, and swap him out with someone who can do the work. If God exists, when VSCO is over, Joel will never helm another tech startup and go back to being a mediocre wedding photographer. Anyone worthwhile who has worked at VSCO leaves as soon as they figure out how broken the company is. If you talk to someone who loves working at VSCO, they're either bad at their job, or have a medical history of severe brain trauma. VSCO is a purgatory for the talented, where the clueless believe they're already in heaven. The number of people laboring under this delusion seems to be dwindling, as the business continues to struggle with its direction. If you're looking to grow professionally and work with excellent people, you should look elsewhere. If you're looking to roll the dice on the startup lottery, you should definitely look elsewhere. I expect my meager stock options to be worthless. Go work at a place with some competent people in charge who will murder people to make a buck, if that's what you're into. Or go work for a nonprofit where you can sleep at night. VSCO serves nobody and will ultimately accomplish nothing.