Confluent

Confluent embodies the modern, transparent, open-source startup. It is fast-paced, collaborative, distributed, and the executive leadership is tuned into the needs of the modern engineer (since they are all modern engineers themselves).

• The brand is super strong and sales are good. Competition is fierce in this space, but being the company behind Kafka really helps.
• Above-average compensation for a startup.
• The code quality is exceptional, and the infrastructure and tooling are right up there with the best and continuously improving.
• Cutting-edge technology and ideas.
• Team members are all experienced in this space and willing to put in the work needed to get stuff done.
• Comfortable office in a great location (right next to the train station in Palo Alto).
• Remote employees are considered well (sympathetic work-from-home days, all meetings and meeting rooms have video conferencing equipment, etc.).
• Product offering is very forward-thinking.

• There are a lot of discussions about product direction that involve so many people (because of the aforementioned transparency) that it could be considered distracting. This is only a con if you're the type of person that would rather not be involved in higher-level strategy, though; for someone who wants this, it's just another positive.

• Being so distributed plus growing so quickly means there are the occasional logistic problems here and there.

Keep up the great work and remember to invest in R&D and competitive threat analysis early on – only the paranoid survive!