LinkedIn

Pros:

• Good positive culture. There are a good number of bright, passionate, hard-working people who want to kick donkey (hey, Glassdoor, don't complain about my bad language without telling me what words offend your delicate sensibilities) and will work together to do so.

• This is Silicon Valley, and work-life balance is a struggle at any company. But, I think LinkedIn offers a good balance. People work hard because they are passionate. Stepping out in the middle of the day to go to an event at your kid's school is totally fine. Yes, many (most?) people check email or work from home in the evenings, but leaving work at 5 or 5:30 is also pretty normal.

• Some of the older reviews (which I read when I joined) talk about politics and infighting. I think that may have been somewhat accurate when I joined, but now I feel that there is a genuine good culture of cross-team collaboration. Things aren't perfect, but they are good.

• Professional development. They want their employees to have a "transformative experience" in their time at LinkedIn. It's cheesy, but that actually has been my experience. I think this is more than lip service. They offer one-day courses on things like presentation skills, and I recently took a formal (and high-quality) 7-day training on a technical topic.

• Good management. Lots of complaints about managers in the older reviews. The problem was that the company was growing quickly and promoting from within (which is fine), but not giving these first-time managers any training or guidance. I'm not a manager, but I'm pretty sure they now take this very seriously, and mid- and lower-level managers are given training and guidance. My manager is a vastly better manager than he was a few years ago; I don't believe he accomplished this without support from the company.

• Hiring good people. We have high hiring standards, both technical and attitude. Some earlier employees were and still are awesome; some not so much. Hiring was revamped/formalized a few years ago, and the quality of new hires has gone up and been more uniform.

• This really is a plus: a couple of people who were awful were discretely let go. This is great for people who aren't awful. I respect and appreciate management for doing this. No, this isn't chilling or scary in any way. It's healthy. Good people attract good people. Bad people repel good people.

• Perks. I don't care about this type of stuff much, but LinkedIn is next door to Google and competing for the same employees, so there are a lot of free creature comforts (breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, occasional massage, etc.). I'm pretty confident LinkedIn is not as over-the-top as Google, but it is over-the-top enough (Kombucha on tap).

• LinkedIn always says "members first," and they mean it. That said, the data they have access to is impressive. They know more about your company than your company does. They know where everyone at your company worked last. They know about their skills. I can't believe that this data is anywhere near being fully exploited.

LinkedIn is not perfect, but I have a hard time coming up with anything serious. Here goes:

Not everyone is great. Some early employees who have done quite well financially are not as good as later employees who contribute more. I admit this is petty and irrational, but that irritates me a little.

Keep it up.