Pros: Especially for a company of Asana's size, the engineering processes and systems are refined and intentional. There are a few things that stand out in terms of helping engineers grow: * Engineering design process * Incident response and learnings * Distribution of responsibility Building a framework around writing, reviewing, and approving engineering designs requires a delicate mix of autonomy (so engineers feel empowered) and guidance (so engineers don’t feel lost or stuck). At Asana, there’s a support system to make sure that the author understands the goals of the project and is informed about the set of decisions they’re trying to settle. On the other hand, Asana doesn’t shy away from giving members of the team ownership over decisions and preventing an overly consensus-focused decision process. Asana’s philosophy around the end-result is also different. Design docs are not intended to be internal-to-team-facing documented decisions. Instead, they’re a place for the entire engineering team (when relevant) to leave feedback and have a discussion. As a new engineer at Asana, you have the option to read docs and comment threads, even in areas of the system you're not directly involved in. This really helps you gain visibility into system architecture thinking (both current and historical trajectory) and exposes you to challenges and tradeoffs in areas you'd usually treat as a blackbox. As any other company serving realtime traffic, Asana has its share of production incidents. Though there is a lot of work that goes into running that realtime response smoothly, the meat of interesting discussion happens afterwards in a post-mortem. Asana is mindful about when having these in-person post-mortems are useful and doesn't do them as a matter of process obligation. Internally, Asana has an “Areas of Responsibility” Asana project to outline who is responsible (i.e. often the decision maker or triage-point-person) for which area — technical and not. This helps newer engineers get involved quickly with technical decision making (less HiPPO effect) and also avoids a cycle where people are using entirely cultural knowledge to figure out who has relevant context when working in a new system area.

Cons: Asana has some engineering debt on its hands. The company has been around for approximately a decade and has built some pretty complex things on its own, including a web reactivity framework and a GraphQL-like data loading system. Navigating that tribal knowledge can be tough at first, especially for engineers who are new to the core concepts. As Asana grows, there is also some pressure being put on the current set of leadership and responsibility constructs on a team level. Teams are now being split into “areas of work” with separate eng, design, and product leads, which is a step towards helping alleviate that.

Pros: They really do the work to build an open and supportive work environment where people have work-life balance. The onboarding process isn't just about learning company procedures and technical details, but includes (really good, engaging, useful!) workshops about things like recognizing our own mental state and how to deal mindfully with that information. At my previous job, I worked for years in a small office where I didn't feel comfortable talking about my life outside the office. The difference I feel now, at a company where I *do* feel comfortable being myself, is astounding. Asana cares about the work of enabling teams to work together effortlessly, and they care about doing it sustainably for their own team. They recognize the stress the larger world is producing for their employees, and they address it to the best of their abilities instead of ignoring it (as I've seen other companies do). They're constantly open to questions and feedback, and they actually incorporate that feedback quickly and visibly. Asana is doing the work to enable emerging talent from non-traditional backgrounds with their AsanaUP programs, especially for folks graduating bootcamps and those returning to the workforce after extended caregiving leave. They're paying a competitive salary and *full* benefits for my four-month returnship, and if I get hired permanently, I've been told to expect a modest raise.

Cons: The only downside I can think of is that it's been so great for this four-month program that if I have to go elsewhere afterwards, it's going to be really hard to find anything that measures up.

Pros: Mission-driven organization committed to creating a values-aligned culture.

Cons: The technology stack can be challenging to navigate.