Indeed

For Engineering dept only: No butt-in-chair mentality or micromanaging. If you get your work done and on time, nobody cares when you come in or leave. You are treated like an adult who can manage their own work schedule.

Some really smart folks work here and built the company. You now have access to all this brainpower and knowledge, so you can learn from them.

Friendly, cheerful, open-minded coworkers. Whether your thing is being Austin-y, good coffee, sports, cooking, etc., there are kindred spirits for you here.

Extremely relaxed dress code. You could roller skate to a meeting if you wanted to.

The existence of a maternity leave policy. (This is a new thing.)

Growing list of fringe benefits:

• Spacious open office
• Daily catered lunches
• Frequent office happy hours
• Shuttle service
• Boat parties
• Movie nights

Office is in West Austin off 360, far away from downtown/fun stuff.

Salaries are below industry standards, and it is difficult to negotiate for more pay.

No clear path for career advancement in non-managerial positions.

As noted above, management styles and work schedule flexibility vary greatly by manager and department. The Engineering dept gets the most freedom. The others, not so much.

So far, pretty good, but you can do so much better. If you want to retain the best talent you can find, do 3 things:

1. Pay your employees more. No amount of stacking on fringe benefits will fix this.
2. Move downtown.
3. Ramp up your benefits, policies, and training programs to be amazing, commensurate with companies in town like Facebook, Google, and Apple. You say you want to be better than them, so enact the necessary changes to do this. Otherwise, don't lump yourselves in with these companies.