Fastly

Most of the time your salary will be paid on time. Most of the time.

Most of the time the office has working WiFi. Most of the time.

Fastly is a terrible place to work, with the worst engineering culture I have seen in my entire career.

When something goes wrong in production, somebody gets fired for it. This means that people prefer to hide problems and point fingers very quickly. Middle managers try to hide incidents and move on quickly, while engineers try to shift blame to their peers. The memory of June 8th 2021 (when Fastly famously "broke the internet") is still fresh, yet no lessons have been learned.

The founders and early-joiners have refused to "pass the torch" on ownership of various systems, and this means that many engineers have accountability without authority. I have seen C-level executives shout abusive insults at engineers during presentations, refusing to accept new constraints that didn't exist 8 years ago.

These issues are minor however, compared to the intense paranoia within the company. Ever since the recent shareholder lawsuits were filed, a "see no evil / hear no evil" culture has grown. Managers will punish you for raising issues and concerns, especially when they affect the company. Tasks are often assigned verbally so that there is no record of performance degradation and bugs. Everyone wants to be ignorant on paper, so they can deny knowledge and involvement.

Due to this paranoia, you often see people turning on unannounced recordings. Everyone is trying to protect themselves while gathering future evidence for whatever happens in the future. I made a habit of writing down notes during meetings with names and dates.

The cherry on top of this is the forced positivity, which is reminiscent of North Korean celebrations. Expect the usual big-corporate pridewashing every year, with the usual X-history months celebrating diversity (without addressing the ethnic nepotism and casual sexism within various departments). If you are unhappy, they will fire you to improve morale.

Sociopaths may enjoy working at Fastly, but if you are an honest person who wants to contribute to society, you should steer clear.

Get a lawyer, keep notes, find a new job.