Engineer • Current Employee
Pros: - Educational for junior specialists
- Interesting product
- Recognizable brand, that attracts smart people
Cons: - Management varies from under-powered to absurdly unqualified.
- Promotion is based on loyalty, not on skills.
- There is no career ladder.
- There is no professional development, and no budget for learning. There are no guarantees they will pay towards your travel expenses even if you speak at a professional conference.
- There are no professional bands; salary is not based on merit, hence the pay gap is often unbelievably huge.
- A very siloed culture amplifies already significant technical debt.
- There are lots of politics.
- Blog-driven development, which usually has nothing to do with your job. You will have to clean up the mess after the rock-stars move to new shiny projects.
- Not an equal chance employer: if you don’t kiss the right place, you are doomed to be treated as a second-class citizen.
- Communication is often problematic, even within teams. Cross-team collaboration is almost non-existent.
- Stolen ideas and claiming undue credit is not an accident; some employees intentionally sabotage their colleagues.
- The people team is useless.
- The CEO rules by intimidation; the COO is weak.
- They are cheap on everything: from tiny desks to business flights without baggage.
- Most of the talent does not stay longer than 2 years or waits for the IPO to quit shortly after.
- Leadership asks employees to write positive reviews on Glassdoor. On bad reviews, they comment to bring it up with your manager, but managers usually ignore any feedback from employees.
- Benefits are poor; equity is meaningless.
- Burnout is common.
- After realizing they are a company of white dudes, they started intentionally hiring minorities to improve the numbers, but they fail to attract anyone senior.
- Belittling employees that left the company.