Pros: Awesome, smart engineers. Managers let engineers do their thing.

Cons: The interns were mostly doing intern work.

Pros: Great environment, nice coworkers, interesting problems.

Cons: The culture is a bit strange, but you get used to it.

Pros: Benefits are excellent. This is a standard mid-sized tech company that's performing well. You'll get excellent medical, dental, & vision, excellent stock options, above-average base salary, a beautiful office, unlimited PTO, and more. The company has done an excellent job of becoming a best place to work for women, and this shows, from the high number of women in top management positions. The company hasn't achieved this by taking a radical feminist stance of trying to encourage women to be more like men and then driving them away in the process, but rather, by valuing women for who they are and creating special benefits that women will enjoy. On-site you'll find manicures and pedicures available, and the company offers flexible hours and other benefits so that women with children won't feel they have to choose between their children and their careers. The managers have created a positive environment by genuinely listening to their employees (en masse). This is a company that understands how to hire developers. Developers are given freedom to suggest and implement new projects. Attention is given to removing processes which can impede developers, and so on. You really will be working with the best of the best. Your colleagues will be alumni from the best names in the industry, such as Google. Having this company on your resume will improve your job prospects. The company is recognized as being one that hires the best of the best. However, this comes with a caveat: if the job doesn't work out, it can also hurt your prospects because many employers assume that if it didn't work out for you at HubSpot, you must not be a good developer. This is especially concerning given the above-average chance of it not working out for you, which is something I will cover in the cons.

Cons: The company has done an excellent job of creating a positive environment for women, but this can lead to double standards. In the office, women make sex jokes of the same nature that you'd expect most women only to make in private with their female friends. It's generally understood that if a male employee were to make similar jokes, he'd be fired. Most tech companies err on the side of not hiring an employee they're on the fence about, in the belief that it's more detrimental to the company to make a bad hire than it is beneficial to make a good one. HubSpot wants to ensure it doesn't miss out on a rockstar developer. The way it reconciles these two competing interests is by hiring anyone the company could go either way on, but also firing them if, for any reason, it isn't working out after 3-6 months. What this means is it's possible to be hired by the company, placed in a situation in which it's impossible for you to succeed through no fault of your own, and fired three months later. In my case, I was placed on a team in which the tech lead was out recovering from surgery and the person who was supposed to be helping me was unavailable. After six months I was fired without the company ever trying me on a different team. What Dan Lyons wrote about the company only caring about the bottom line is very true. The managers do listen, but only to large numbers. As an individual, you matter very little. I worked 10-hour days and on weekends to compensate for the absence of management I was given. I suggested pairing me to work with someone from another team for just a few days, and it was ignored. People knew I was struggling, but not a single one ever offered to help me. The only management I was given was being told that anonymous members of my team had assumed I wasn't doing work, and because the team is more important than the individual, it was my job to figure out how to get them to stop. When I was fired, I saw a very different side of one of my managers. This was someone who was largely respected in the company and regarded as a sensitive, helpful manager. I was told I didn't have common sense and that I didn't belong in the field. I've since gone on to lead projects at major companies and be courted by some of the biggest names in tech, but once the company decides it doesn't need you, you see its real side. The company's approach to management is very passive-aggressive. They might hold a meeting telling everyone they don't want them to feel they have to work too long, but privately you'll be told you're underperforming and you need to get your productivity up. Even though the company does take steps to create a feeling that you're around friends, the truth is many of the people will show a different side of themselves once you're no longer with the company. Only one person from the company has kept in touch. The reputation about being the best place to work in Boston is largely hype that the company has created. During the years I've worked in Boston, the only people I've met who wanted to work for HubSpot were college students who bought into the hype. By contrast, I know several seasoned developers who know about this company's reputation and don't want to work here. Everyone in Boston knows someone who knows someone who got overworked by the company and either was fired or quit. Once you leave the company, you'll meet multiple people who tell you they felt the same way as Dan Lyons but were less vocal about it, etc.