Pros
- Free lunch and dinner - Casual attire - Work by the beach - Small company means bigger impact on the user base and on the product
Cons
- Top-level management is churning, most recently our COO - Unpolished CEO who loves to fly off the handle and fire people who disagree with him - Complete secrecy and lack of trust: even as an employee & shareholder you're not allowed to know any information about the company: projects, users, valuation, etc. - Face-time in the office matters. Unlike every other tech company, working from home is frowned upon. But you'll be too scared to ask, so it doesn't matter. - Mandatory Wednesday evening meetings.... seriously. - Very junior leadership across the company - Shocking amounts of red-tape and bureaucracy for such a small company - Negative, fear-driven, top-down culture - Less competitive salaries, benefits, & perks to Silicon Valley competitors (see below) - Horrific equity vesting schedule over 4 years: 10%, 20%, 30%, 40% whereas almost every other company you vest 25% a year for 4 years. - 10 days of PTO a year and 5 sick days (No, I'm not joking, and yes this is 2015. Better not get sick this year... or any year!) - No performance reviews/salary adjustments, etc. - No bonus structure - No 401k matching - All those really cool tech company perks you've heard about: we don't have any of them. - Far from the rest of the tech community in the Silicon Valley (means limited options when it's time to change jobs) - Cost of living in Venice/Santa Monica is insane. Bay Area prices. Less Egregious Cons: - Working by Venice beach can actually be pretty annoying, loud, or even scary - If you didn't join the company early enough to get a parking spot, you have to park in a lot 1 mile away and take a (free) shuttle to the office. The shuttle starts going back to the lot in the evening at 6pm. Good luck getting home if you need to leave before that (but you won't need to leave before 6, because you'll be too scared to ask)