Marqeta

The product is fantastic and there are really smart engineers here working on fascinating problems. Top-level culture seems strong and opinionated in ways I believe in. Time off policies are remarkably flexible and I don't feel laden with guilt when I need to use it.

Remote work has been surprisingly painless and my teammates have been fantastic to work with. The company cares about effectively balancing COVID concerns with in-office work and has not forced back-to-office mandates.

The company's overall success is also definitely a perk. There's an air of positivity and a view that any problems can be figured out or solved. Compensation (at least mine) is competitive especially in light of the recent IPO.

All the hallmark pains of a rapidly growing company are there.

Middle management seems horribly overworked and as a result, it doesn't feel like my management chain cares about me or my success.

Numerous weekly one-on-ones have been missed or skipped unilaterally and issues I need escalated are ignored.

There's also no effective way to communicate my concerns about my manager either: yearly reviews don't offer a space for upward feedback and there are no skip-level one-on-ones.

Generally this doesn't feel intentionally malicious, but more that other issues and people are being prioritized over my needs and a manager's time is the bottleneck.

In a similar way, my work is constantly being reprioritized.

Work I was told I would get to do the next quarter has, without failure, been changed to a different, usually less desirable project.

I also haven't been given the time to learn any systems at depth (many of which are rife with the usual tech debt) before swapping off a project.

Again, this is largely out of necessity and not malice, but still drags on me.

What's most concerning is there doesn't seem to be an end in sight.

The company is continuing to expand at this rapid rate, and the hiring pipeline for managers seems to be bottlenecked.

The new CTO has brought even more reprioritization and reorgs, which will hopefully result in more stability, but I'm not holding my breath.