AppLovin

1. AppLovin is performing very well relative to its competitors. It's good to be on a winning team.

2. The headquarters office in Palo Alto is very nice. Some of the best corporate food I've ever had.

3. They hate time-wasting group meetings. This was one of my favorite aspects of AppLovin culture.

4. Things tend to move fast. Stuff gets done.

5. The stock has gone bonkers in recent months. So that's been great for those who were able to participate. But of course there's no guarantee that will continue.

1. Lots of layoffs and firings, creating a constant atmosphere of fear.

2. Disdain for any "soft skills" to an almost absurd extent. Performance management was amateur hour and laughably bad. For example, my boss got an important promotion. I didn't hear about it from anyone in the company, not even a Slack message. I found out about it when LinkedIn notified me. Another example: I was given significant additional responsibilities and then, a few weeks later, I was unceremoniously terminated. Very mixed messages.

3. Specializations (engineering, sales, product management) seemed very "siloed" with bad communication and low trust. I understand an engineering organization should emphasize technical skills.

4. Release processes seemed awfully casual for a company of AppLovin's size, with lots of rollbacks, hotfixes, and patch releases. There seemed to be a disdain for process. Some of that can be healthy, but you need some structure when operating at AppLovin's scale.

5. Multiple reports of toxic culture from various parts of the company. My experience backs this up.

AppLovin isn't a startup anymore. You need a real performance review system. It doesn't have to be hugely cumbersome and take a lot of time, but it should be clear, concise, and set expectations.

You can get away with treating engineers badly during times like these when there are a lot of layoffs. But if things change, people might be more willing to leave.