Faire

In many respects, Faire is the best of a handful of tech companies where I have worked, but the company is only 3 years old and has a lot of growing to do. Time will tell.

• The work feels meaningful. We're helping small businesses grow. We get very honest feedback from makers and retailers about what we're doing right and wrong, and it keeps the work in perspective on a daily basis. Customers are kept at the forefront of all product discussions.

• Most employees are smart and hard-working. The engineers here are some of the best and most down-to-earth engineers that I've worked with.

• Low performers have been quickly let go so far.

• The founders seem to care about employee well-being and make an effort to interact with employees. They come from balanced backgrounds (1 product, 1 operations, 2 engineering). If you're an engineer who has worked at companies founded by non-engineers, you will probably appreciate having founders who are engineers, who built large parts of the product themselves, and who can appreciate what you do on a personal level for a change.

• The company started with two offices from the beginning and has three now, so working across offices was always part of the culture. (This can be a huge growing pain for other companies.) Traveling to other offices is encouraged but not required for many folks, so if you enjoy traveling for work, that could be a plus. (Currently, all of engineering is in Kitchener. Customer success is split across Kitchener, San Francisco, and Salt Lake City. Almost everyone else is in San Francisco, including product, design, sales, finance, and data science.)

• The company does not feel political. At least I don't think it is, but other Glassdoor reviewers seem to think otherwise. (However, engineering is usually less political than other functions unless something has gone terribly wrong.)

• The business is doing well. The last round of fundraising appeared effortless, and the valuation doubled.

• There is still a lot of room to grow, and there are obvious things we should build to go after that growth. We haven't tapped out of good ideas yet.

• Morale generally feels high despite the workload. In a recent anonymous company pulse survey, 95-100% of employees indicated they were proud to work at the company and felt connected to the mission.

• The compensation, benefits, and perks are on par with many tech companies in the area (besides Google), as far as I can tell--free snacks and meals, beautiful office space, 401K for US employees, health insurance, reasonable salary and stock options, unlimited PTO, autonomy to WFH within reason, etc.

Some days (but not all days) you really have to fight for your own work/life balance. No one will explicitly tell you to work more, but you know the work you have to do won't get done if you don't.

Everyone around you works a lot. (I admit that I have become part of the problem too.) Working across time zones can mean a longer work day for everyone.

Slack is overused for company communications. People will message you on Slack all the time, so you have to figure out for yourself when to mute your notifications.