Pros: Good pay and work-life balance is also great.

Cons: I did not have a bad experience here.

Pros: Culture is warm. Everyone is incredibly friendly and there are no jerks here. People are passionate about the mission, which leads to very user-centric product development processes. The work here is crucial to helping thousands of small businesses around the country operate. The product directly impacts people’s livelihoods, which feels very rewarding (but sometimes stressful when things go wrong). Benefits are fantastic. 100% contribution for medical. Dental and vision are very inexpensive. FSA/HSA/life/disability are all available as add-ons. Lots of commuter options, including a monthly Uber credit that can be used on any kind of Uber (though it was added to offset the Dogpatch location that’s more difficult to get to). Company is on a rocket ship trajectory with tons of growth. Feels like there are dozens of new faces at every company all-hands meeting. Customer base is growing quickly. Engineering team has a great culture of learning and development. Each engineer has a generous L&D budget that can be used for workshops, conferences, books, etc. Most people who use it are able to travel to one or two conferences a year. Solid leadership at the top. The co-founders are all still here and have built out a stellar executive team. Overall culture of transparency (one of our company values). Beautiful open office in a converted warehouse. Lots of soft seating around the office. Meeting rooms are all set up to be remote-friendly. Delicious lunch and dinner that’s catered daily (except dinner on Fridays). Great snacks and drinks (though quality has been noticeably declining, but they’re still great for now). Flexible WFH policy.

Cons: The EPD team is going through some rough growing pains. Overall velocity is slowing down, and there’s a lot of process overhead. There’s a lot of tech debt that can sometimes make development slow and painful. Yet, tech debt doesn’t seem to be a priority compared to churning out features. There’s a lot of legacy code (e.g., Backbone) that lives in a huge monolith, and people are afraid to touch it out of fear of breaking things. A team was created to move us toward a more service-oriented architecture, but they’ve existed for over a year now, and I haven’t seen anything come out of that other than GraphQL errors that cause our build to flake. The development experience is getting worse. It takes so long to start the app locally, and there are always random issues that cause things to break. The folks here are passionate about the mission and the work, but watch out for management expecting longer hours or extra work under the guise of an “ownership mentality” without proper compensation, recognition, and leveling. Passion work only goes so far. On a similar note, high performers are not recognized appropriately, nor are they compensated. There are no bonuses, and the difference in the annual raise for someone meeting expectations versus exceeding expectations is so negligible that it's almost insulting. Everyone being “full stack” doesn’t scale, especially when “full stack” here means mostly back end. We need to hire for more specialized skillsets (area-specific such as mobile and front end, or stack-specific such as React and Rails) and ensure there’s a healthy mix of skillsets, especially on product teams. The culture around low performers is too lax, and some folks are taking advantage of it. When people aren't meeting expectations, it can take a long time to address it, which can bring down the morale of other teammates.

Pros: Gusto has a truly world-class culture. Gusto tries hard to empower its employees and makes sure that everyone is working on super impactful projects. All of my coworkers are extremely nice and friendly. Everyone at the company cares deeply about the problem that Gusto is trying to solve. “Do the right thing” is one of Gusto’s core values, and it shows in everything that we do, from our large projects to the small things that people do every day for each other. Extremely cooperative environment. I have had the opportunity to work on some challenging projects, but management does not drop a project on you and turn away. They provide plenty of support whenever you need it. My coworkers are always extremely willing to help. Work-life balance has improved a lot over the years. The company actively encourages employees to take time off, and I have never felt that I was prevented from doing something because of work. Introspection is a core part of the culture at Gusto. We regularly review the current status of the team and company and evaluate how things can be better. Gusto has all of the things you would expect from a Silicon Valley tech firm, but nothing feels over the top. It has amazing benefits, free lunch and dinner, fun social events, and a casual work environment. Additionally, Gusto offers a free trip anywhere in the world after 1 year at the company.

Cons: The SF office could be nicer, but they've done a great job of making the space feel cozy and welcoming. There is no time to cruise here at Gusto. Everyone is tasked with ambitious projects with aggressive deadlines.