Pros: Tons of smart engineers. Supportive culture.

Cons: Upper management is lacking direction. Certain teams are overloaded with work.

Pros: Nice building with a great view. Friendly co-workers.

Cons: If you're not at the core, you'll be forgotten. That's what's happened to Seattle. Palo Alto is the engineering core and Chicago is the business core. The company is pretty immature in many ways, and communication is definitely one of them. So if you're in a satellite office, you won't get all the information you need to do your job, and you'll be forgotten when it comes to a lot of opportunities. That ends up seriously limiting engineers' career growth. You'll be better off at many, many other companies within Seattle. The only outlier is the marketing team that's in Seattle, but they managed to not be forgotten by making *everything* a fire that is urgent. Palo Alto hates Seattle because of it and will sometimes follow up on requests because they know "the people in Seattle are experts at making noise." This reinforces a bad cycle because the marketing team then knows that works and continues that. The other engineering teams in Seattle get labeled with that reputation, even though they're very separated from the marketing side. If, for some strange reason, you really want to work for Groupon, the best move is to go to Palo Alto. Cost-cutting measures are a bit ridiculous. Penny-wise, pound-foolish. In the last couple of years, let me list out all the HR problems that have been big enough that a mass e-mail had to be sent to the whole office: * All the men had to be asked to attend a meeting where the SVP had to ask them to stop urinating on the ground in the restrooms. * Employees were asked not to expose themselves to the facility staff. * People had to be told to stop spitting and blowing their nose into the kitchen sink because it's not hygienic.

Pros: Lucrative package and good pay.

Cons: There’s absolutely no clarity on where the company is heading. Leadership doesn't seem to have a roadmap or any clear next steps, and honestly, it feels like complete chaos most of the time. The management style here goes beyond micromanagement — it's more like nano-management. Every tiny detail of what employees are doing is tracked. There have even been cases where leadership commented on how much time someone spent sitting at their desk when in the office. The work culture follows a typical hire-and-fire model. The first 2–3 months might seem smooth, but after that, the real issues start showing up. You're expected to be a "rockstar" and somehow fix all the years of legacy issues almost overnight, which is completely unrealistic. For the first time in my career, I saw leadership that didn’t have any clear idea about what to do next — and yet somehow expected employees to figure everything out on their own without any direction. Also worth mentioning: in just a few months, 3–4 teams have been shut down and many people have been laid off. So job security is a big concern.