Exciting growth-stage startup with very friendly culture
Pros
The people are great! Lots of very smart, very friendly people. The product is strong and the technical work is solid. Very fast moving. Management are receptive to new ideas. Remote friendly. Senior ICs and senior management are great; middle-management are learning. Mostly they are trying hard and doing the right thing, but are inexperienced.
Cons
PingCAP suffers from some of the classic symptoms of a growth-stage startup: scaling management is difficult, there could be better direction into new areas, and 'scaling up' engineering processes has been a bit hit and miss. We are trying hard and I think we are doing much better than a lot of companies in the same position. For non-Chinese speakers, the language barrier makes communication more challenging. Most staff speak pretty good English, but it's still a second language. Between that and timezones, it makes it difficult to have productive meetings via video.
