Pros: - Brilliant coworkers - Fast-paced work - Fun office environment - Generous perks - Mission-driven - Transparent company culture

Cons: - Cliquey - Company culture rewards those who put work above all else (i.e., lack of work-life balance). - Expectations vary wildly between teams. - High burnout rate. - Insufficient leadership resources (i.e., if you can't deduce what senior management is really looking for, you'll flounder). - Lack of action on known systemic issues. - Most of the awesome folks left years ago. - Poor communication between teams and management.

Pros: Duolingo aims to provide globally accessible and fun education, and working at Duolingo is definitely fun and rewarding! The people here are all dedicated to the mission and really value top-quality engineering and design. It's incredibly satisfying to contribute to such a wonderful product used by so many people around the world. The people at Duolingo are really top-notch, polite, and respectful, while still willing to give and receive concrete feedback on their work in order to provide the best experience possible for our users. One unique thing about Duolingo compared to other jobs I've had is the level of impact, not just in terms of users but the breadth of contributions. Even as an engineer, I get a chance to be fully involved in the ideation of my team's projects, evaluation of metrics, and triage of user-facing issues. Putting on so many different hats is common here and really allows me to feel a strong sense of ownership and pride in my work.

Cons: Things can move pretty quick! There's a lot of momentum around launching new features and gathering engagement and learning metrics as early as possible. Teams are reorganized pretty frequently, so you need to be ready for change.

Pros: - Generally a joy to show up to work every day. - Excellent engineering culture. Everyone I worked with seemed to be genuinely excited to be there, solving problems and working on new things. - Management highly values employee satisfaction and career growth. I had lots of opportunities to learn new skills and take on new challenges.

Cons: - Living in Pittsburgh isn't for everyone, and most positions are located there. - The company has grown a lot over the last few years, which has made for constant change in teams, people, processes, features, code/architecture – just about everything. This isn't really a con for the right type of person, and it may mellow out as the company transitions out of the late-stage startup phase, but be prepared for a very dynamic environment.