HubSpot

Great engineering ecosystem. Very easy to get code into production.

Very good standard of engineers (I think below par engineers that got through the interview process simply would not handle the work and would leave).

Self-organized teams (although this is both an asset and a liability at HubSpot).

Compensation was so-so.

Self-organized teams have meant some teams set a higher bar for their service quality. So you could be getting paged very often on a strict team and not at all on a lenient team.

Eng Management was hands-off, which was good, but they weren't policing the fact that the team was missing input from Product. Engineers were, in effect, the product owner/manager.

On-call is completely unacceptable, especially as remuneration is considered part of your base compensation. You're on-call 1 in 3-5 weeks (in some cases, even every 2). And if your team has strict monitoring, expect to be getting calls.

So at one end, you've engineers on-call 1 in 5 weeks who might never get called, and at the other end, engineers on-call 1 in 3 weeks getting called round the clock. And both are compensated the same.

The "culture," although having nice parts, is force-fed at such a rate that you eventually vomit and reject it. (We don't all live/work in the US, so pushing agendas that are US-born in Ireland is very wrong).

Young engineers with little experience in other companies. This has led to a lot of belief that the way HubSpot does things is the way the world works. This should not be the case.

HubSpot could be a great place to work. The things that are good (ecosystem, standard of engineers) take years to achieve. So, it's easier things around process that I feel should be corrected to make this a top spot.

Ease the culture agenda. Provide explicit compensation for on-call hours (people on-call more often get paid more; people getting paged more often get paid more again). Get product involved in all teams.