Pros
- Genuinely talented and friendly engineers to work with, easy to ask for help or mentorship - Related to the previous point, it feels rewarding to help others, engineers come off as humble and very willing to learn - Junior developers are exposed to common coding practices, attempts at strong software engineering principles, and are able to grow quickly to a mid level baseline - Good 401K matching, lots of PTO, remote first - Very easy interviewing process, technical challenge is relevant to a developer’s workday - Good WLB as there is no real demand for on the clock support of applications
Cons
- Product direction does not inspire confidence, many initiatives do not seem to align with actual market demand, unsatisfactory explanations of how to get from Point A -> Point B regarding goals, lots of backtracking or discarding of engineered efforts - Burn rate is concerning, as there have been struggles to obtain paying customers - Non-competitive compensation compared to the rest of the US market, no cash bonuses, equity grants are heavily backloaded, salaries are on the lower end outside of the very highest levels - Feels very much like a business/product problem space; engineering work often comes off as artificial and forced due to waiting for product to decide on the correct prioritization of items - Reiterating on the previous point: there are not many interesting problems to solve as an experienced developer, most actual implementation items are basic in nature outside of the ML team - Feels like there is a culture of hiring to fix problems (both technical and overall issues) instead of working internally to resolve them when possible; new hires often end up in seemingly disadvantageous positions, occasionally ending up with no real meaningful work to take on - Promotions do not feel transparent, and it doesn’t seem like effort is always fairly rewarded - Meeting bloat is not unheard of despite an emphasis on agile practices