Pros: - Profitable - Mission driven - Data driven - Uses cutting-edge tech

Cons: - Lots of growth can be tough. - Space at HQ is getting tight.

Pros: - Arcade - Drinking - There are a handful of cool people.

Cons: The self-reviews are soul-smushing. Maybe I'm just sensitive, but having to rate myself 1-5 on 5 traits and write an essay about why I deserve a promotion, even if your manager has already decided to not put you up to the hiring committee, just feels farcical and dehumanizing. I think management is awful at assessing who's a good engineer and who's not. I had a string of bad managers (or managers who were forced to be bad due to requirements placed on them, unclear). I had about 5 managers in less than 2 years, most of whom were focused on "getting out the door faster." I worked in a vertical that made no money, so regardless of how good my code was, I wasn't seen as on a "star team" because the product side couldn't make it work. Obsession with Google/Twitter is true. The CTO admitted to reading private slacks. Engineers in general would be careful what they'd say on slack because they were concerned about privacy, which I think had a real "chilling effect" on the ability to acknowledge management problems. I once had a manager rewrite my API calling code into 15 classes + 15 interfaces "for reusability" (introducing bugs in the process). The code was never reused because the vertical was basically shut down, but he was "from Google," so I guess I'm wrong.... When I left, I got more than 30k more. They didn't even try to match my offer. I understand why; I called it like I saw it, and that style really didn't fit in there.

Pros: Solid business model. Frequent parties with open bars. Most people there were pretty decent, and some parts of the company really know what they're doing.

Cons: The engineering department is a minefield. Some teams and projects are hopelessly dysfunctional. If you find yourself helping maintain a terribly designed project, and your team's leadership isn't aware of the problem and actively trying to replace it, do yourself a favor and run away before you torpedo your career.