Meta

Open culture, challenging status quo is sort of expected of you; you have a large degree of freedom.

You can deliver things at scale fast (that's actually expected of you).

Smart, often brilliant and well-meaning people to work with 95% of the time.

Focus on people (both employees and users).

Good compensation (if you compare things within the UK).

Handled COVID really well.

Onboarding is a hit-or-miss; you need to be very conscious about what team or manager you choose.

Managers are a "hit-or-miss" too (this is particularly true for EMEA).

There is a lot of change, often a lack of continuity, and a lot of friction (in org, code, ownership...) due to this.

There is often short-term thinking; people are smart, but incentives are often set up in a way that encourages short-term thinking.

You cannot get away with simply being a great engineer; you need to be a sort of social butterfly and build personal connections as well to meet expectations.

Unless you are very conscious about your own growth and career, you can have a hard time growing.

Hours can be long in order to meet expectations (WLB can be especially challenging if you need to work with the US west coast).

There is peer pressure to achieve more and more and more... This can lead to a vicious cycle and often burnout. Differences in personal circumstances (and willingness/opportunity to put in extra hours) are not really taken into account when impact is measured.

• Onboarding, onboarding, onboarding: put much more emphasis on onboarding (primarily culturally).

• Do not let newcomers join teams where there is either only superficial incentive or no bandwidth to support ramp-up (that's a lose-lose for everyone).

• Put much more emphasis on the growth of individuals (and keeping them longer).

• Incentivize managers to in fact grow the people they support (i.e., their reports). The current system fairly judges current performance but leaves much of growth-related thinking, acting, and planning to the report, unless you are lucky and get a great manager, but it's pure luck.

• Encourage people to switch teams (and try out different things) at the slightest hint of interest.