Pros
Decent base pay (still not as competitive as the tech giants in the Bay) 401K Depending on the team and manager, can be an “ok” place to work
Cons
Product and UX teams within @Labs are mediocre at best. We have line-level PMs to Senior Directors who don’t know how to run a meeting let alone run sprint planning. They are so mediocre, full of apathy (aren’t they supposed to be the face of their product and team?), typical 9-5 and as Mr. Trump would say “weak people” that even being called a passive-aggressive (which is very common in the Bay Area) would be considered a compliment. If you ask a PM what was their single biggest achievement last week? The answer will be: oh I told Business to <woof>-off. It’s not: oh I ran some #s, did a deep-dive on a feature with my team, bounced-off ideas for a hackathon, worked on a new strategy to get more sign-ups etc. And speaking of designers: they can’t move fast because they follow a traditional, waterfall approach. When UX churns out <woofy> design, their lame excuse time and again is “oh Walmart.com demographic is very different" - no it’s not. Not anymore. They are not <woofs> – unlike people from North Korea, US shoppers have access to the internet and are free to browse every g-d shopping website. By the way, what's more interesting is: every design (incl. something as small as font-color change) needs to be “approved” by an archaic committee of senior leaders – who all assemble for a few minutes, share their random $.02 and go back to browsing news websites and having long lunches. If you ask these so called “senior leaders” to design something in Sketch, I bet you $100 that they will fail miserably. Apple, FB etc. all have design review meetings – but they discuss and give feedback to the right problems that deserve honest attention - not every little change. I only know of 1-2 PMs who know what the F is going on (you’d be confused if they are Design Leads or Engineering Managers as they know their s--t in and out) and get well respected by their teams. If you’re in HR or leadership – hear me out: your top PMs are on the run – the only reason they are still @Labs is because of H1B visa. Motivate and promote ‘em before they leave you scrambling.
