Airbnb

They're doing a great job bringing in engineering talent to shore up their infrastructure. Over the last six months, they've brought in top talent from companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google. It really shows when you see what's planned for the next year.

Some great tooling. The development environments leave something to be desired, but their core infrastructure (especially some of the backend services) is really impressive. Tons of companies in SV are using many of the tools Airbnb has open-sourced, and this is only a fraction of what's been built.

They're aware of technical debt. The current stack is very Ruby-heavy and monolithic, and they're migrating to well-defined Java/Scala microservices, which is great.

Very little red tape to actually deploy code.

The culture is a thing. If you're a "gilfoyle," you'll probably hate it here. Thankfully, they do a good job bringing in people that actually want to be there and care about the product.

Food is amazing, better than Facebook. Also great benefits and fantastic compensation if you're on the more experienced side.

Massive potential. The exec team is focusing on the right projects to get to a point where we can IPO. We're not quite there yet, but it's an exciting time to be here.

They actually care about their customers.

Brand new hardware.

Epic office. This place is an interior design marvel.

Health insurance, etc., are excellent.

You can pick your team as an engineer. This leads to better chemistry and keeps all teams focused on making themselves appealing.

Last year or so, they promoted some people to management that really need more training.

So on some teams, you're not going to have a great time.

If you're not an engineer, YMMV. I've heard the food team, facilities, etc., is largely being phased out for contractors.

Tiny 401k match. But this should probably change when they IPO.

You really have to carve out your own path here. If you want a clear progression, this is not the place for you.

Don't screw over food staff and CX just to bring costs down. These people are integral to the culture of the company and indirectly shape the community here and the product as a result.