Arista Networks

Those of you who worked at traditional networking companies will be amazed at the tools, technologies, and development environment that we have. We don't connect two switches the traditional way; we have Python and our test infrastructure to do that. Testing your new feature the traditional way is much harder than testing it via the infra we have. Moreover, you would spend most of the time designing the feature. The donkey work you did for robust unit testing is no longer needed. It has been streamlined, and the testing efforts you put in will be leveraged whenever someone changes the relevant code.

There are hardly any bugs, bugs of the kind you would have seen in your previous N jobs at networking companies.

Coming to people: this is the highest concentration of smartest people I have ever seen. You don't need to stretch yourself to explain a complicated item in the code that you are looking at very closely; people just get it. One mail, one diagram on board, and you are there.

Stocks have great potential. Yes, even if you are joining today, and with average valuation for the company, you will make a reasonable amount.

Compensation. See the advice to management section.

You guys have done an amazing job in setting up the culture, envisioning a company that could stand up against the giants. You have hired the smartest people around.

Moreover, the founders have been generous in allocating a huge stock pool for employees. But, I think the time has come where you need to seriously start looking at revising the compensation, starting a bonus plan.

Everybody in the company knows we are doing amazingly well, and it's the people who have made it possible. A sermon now and then explaining what the "inflection point" would be or what the stock pricing would be is not going to help.

Act on it before it becomes too late. Sure, stocks have potential. But employees have no clue regarding the timelines for an IPO.

Please don't spoil a great team that you have built. If stock really does well, no one is going to care for a bonus or hike going forward.

You have a real chance of making a statement to employees that "we care for the team" by distributing some bonus now – in these years before an IPO. This would also send a strong message in the job market that Arista management really cares.