Pros
- Freedom to architect the front-end with a great designer, though much of it was just mocked-up demos since the backend API was perpetually under construction, misguided, and poorly managed. Not to the fault of the backend developers. I would see the requirements changing daily.
- I did gain experience pushing features out quickly, iterating under
uncertainty, and collaborating with colleagues who were just as stressed but still supportive. We built a bond over how ridiculous we were being treated.
Cons
- Late pay if at all: The pay is supposed to be monthly, but I finally got paid after a month and two weeks of working. Others were constantly asking me if I had been paid yet, because many of us weren’t sure if or when it would come. To this day I know from 3 other colleagues that they still have not been paid.
- Pay cuts on a whim: After being paid late, I was told my pay would be cut by 28.57% for the next two months because we didn't meet our one-month deadline and that “things were going to get hectic”. Effectively punishing new hires for their own organizational failures and defeating the purpose of agreeing to a salary in the first place.
- Hunger Games vibe: Of the ~10 people they hired for engineering at the start of the month (frontend, backend, dev ops, biologists, etc...), almost everyone was laid off within weeks. It didn't feel good waiting to see who was going to get canned next or having your job and pay threatened.
- Toxic management: New hires were treated like children submitting unclear homework to angry teachers under pressure from their principal. A classic blame cascade. Leadership alternated between saying they were “very happy” with performance and then turning around days later to say an offshore “review team” laughed at my work and made fun of it, adding further "They were mind blown how bad it was. Just fyi." They openly insulted me after laying me off. I know for a fact it wasn't that bad, and more likely a very shallow evaluation or naive scoring system at best.
- Disorganization everywhere: No onboarding or offboarding. No real process. Expectations were vague. Leadership simply told us to “figure it out because you’re senior,” while they shuffled blame downward when things inevitably fell apart. Zero accountability at the top, even when we (the new hires) all knew who the problems were.