Pros: Decent benefits, smart people, interesting work.

Cons: You cannot work your way up here. No matter how much time, effort, blood, sweat, and tears you shed, no matter if you exceed expectations in your role, if there is not a very clearly defined “next step” for you, the company will swallow your life and give you nothing in return. I wish I had known this from the beginning. I could have avoided so much unnecessary stress, skipped lunches, late nights, weekends, and furious multitasking. I have nothing to show for the multiple years of my life that I poured into this company.

Pros: If you would have asked me last year, I would have given a much harsher review. Things have changed in the past year, however, and it's (for the most part) for the better. * The company has split (generally) into verticals. This makes it a lot easier to figure out what's going on with what you'll be working on and more structured. Before, I was working on a lot of different things and it was hard to context switch and figure out who to ask about questions/issues I had. Splitting into verticals has solved a lot of this. * I work with some really great and smart people. While there's always some dead weight, there doesn't seem to be as much at CK as I've seen at other places I've worked (on my team and the teams I work with, at least). Everyone seems to be very passionate about what they do. People are very nice as well. There are a few jerks in engineering, but 99% of people are pleasant to work with. * Perks are pretty good. The events team works really hard and always sets up fun events and outings for us. * Senior management really seems to listen. It sometimes takes a while to take action on issues, or they may not be addressed 100% to my liking, but they seem to at least acknowledge our feedback and truly take it into consideration. A concrete example: a number of us complained that the PTO we were getting wasn't competitive with similar companies. Ken, the CEO, brought up this issue at the company-wide meeting, shared his research, and announced that FTE employees would be getting the week between Christmas and New Years off, as well as some other PTO additions for brand-new and long-time employees, which I feel is a fair compromise.

Cons: The bi-annual review process is super confusing. Last time, there were two different peer-review systems: one for CK as a whole and one for engineering. I felt like I was spending more time writing reviews for other people than doing work. I did get some useful feedback from others, but I don't know if it was worth the 15 hours I spent writing reviews in two separate systems. The WFH policy is still lacking. Maybe I was spoiled at my last job where I could work from home whenever I wanted. However, a large number of us travel in from far away (i.e., San Jose and farther), and it would be good to be able to work from home once in a while. I find I get a lot done working from home because I can work uninterrupted without people coming up to my desk to ask questions or chat.

Pros: I've been a software/infrastructure engineer at Credit Karma for quite some time and would like to share a few thoughts specifically on the engineering side. After having worked on a few different teams and with just about all of them, I've felt that the variance in terms of quality of the team and final delivered product is fairly high across the engineering organization. This is probably no surprise to anyone who has worked in the environment of a large engineering department before. So, do take reviews that make generalizations with a grain of salt, including this one. Personally, I have had very good experiences during my time here: no ridiculous on-call schedule, fair compensation, and various opportunities to learn and grow. But I have also taken initiatives, to varying degrees, over the years to make sure that my experiences are and remain good. It would be unfair to expect that managers will always be able to cater to my expectations without feedback, though I definitely believe that middle management can be improved in terms of both skill and empathy. Yet, at the same time, from what I've seen, the communication channels between employees and managers are very robust, and one should very much use them for direct feedback. My advice to an engineering candidate is to come to the interview with specific technologies and problems that you want to work with, along with a list of concerns that would make or break your time here and at any other company, and address them directly with your interviewers. The more specific you can be about your ideal engineering environment, the better. At worst, the answers that you get become leverage which you can use in the future. For what it's worth, I have fairly good opinions of both the executive team and the company's long-term future.

Cons: See above review for cons.