Etsy

Very friendly people, very laid back.

Everyone keeps a close watch on the door, and only talented, non-jerk, ambitious kind people come on board.

There are very few locked doors. If you have the time and ambition to make something better, you can, and you own it, and no one makes unreasonable demands of you.

The downside to having lots of opportunity and potential is that you might often feel guilty about not doing more. So if that applies to you, be wary.

The product decisions are traditionally all made by committee. This often leads to underwhelming products, even though everyone is talented. This is because the culture of being kind leads to few coherent decisions. A lot of input from a lot of people ends up washing out more pointed ideas.

Also, the size is ridiculous, and this is due to reasons inherent to a venture capital sort of company. They just need to have a lot of employees. The more employees, the stronger the company seems, and the more growth they can realize. This has made the company change from a giant family to more of a "normal" segmented business. No one knows anyone else, but as we are all employed here, we are part of the "size" of the company, and it's hard to complain about.

Please continue to focus on the principals: just hire kind people who know their stuff. There are probably a lot of smart people no one wants to work with.

As for current reports, just be sure people take pride in what they do. Some people want to drive and haven't been able to and left. I realize other people don't want to drive, but both types still want to have pride in their work.

It seems important to be aware of the balance between A) "heavy-handed" product decisions and B) a culture that allows input from everyone. I can't say how to balance them perfectly; maybe it's impossible, but it's important to see. Things seem to fall safely on the side of the latter. Decisions are driven by engineering, and everyone has a say, which makes it fun. Things rarely come strictly from a top-down direction.

This leaves room for people to imagine products that could be more coherent and effective were there a strongly guided, focused voice. Is this true? I don't know. But it always comes up. People frequently say our effort isn't focused enough on specific ideas.

Also, I don't know anything about management.