Pros: Like many companies out there, Affirm was a dream during its start-up phase. Health benefits were great, the CEO was very visible and approachable. There were great learning stipends and opportunities if you had a supportive manager.

Cons: Once the company went public, what was once a minimal, gradual decline all of a sudden became a ski slope. All finances were focused on growth by acquiring new offices and small companies, so promotions were extremely limited and salaries were a joke, especially if you're living in the Bay Area with constantly skyrocketing costs of living. Middle management is incompetent and doesn't seem to care too much about their employees' development, especially if you are a person of color. Worse if you're a woman of color; the management titles in the org chart spoke for themselves. Hoping to spark new ideas for change, I expressed my concerns to the newly onboarded CISO that I didn't feel the engineering org was a place where women could succeed. To which they replied, "Oh, sorry to hear that." Something that should have been alarming to hear as an exec was simply dismissed.

Pros: Smart coworkers, beautiful office, nice perks.

Cons: Systems in place break easily and are a pain to operate. Code debt is a real issue here: there are old parts of the codebase that are not owned by any team or IC, and cause bugs and breakages in new features. The product direction is lacking. Affirm wants to reinvent consumer finance, but I didn't see any steps in my time there to achieve that. Employee morale in that area also seemed low. WLB is not great — dinner is at 7pm, which means that quite a few of the team won't leave the office until 7:30 or 8pm.

Pros: The company really cares about its employees. They offer remote work, stocks provided not after a year but from the start of employment, company holidays once every month for remote work, and stipends for remote work. It seems too good to be true.

Cons: My experience was not well aligned with company needs.