Pros: Management seems to care very much about your well-being and feelings. They've made it their mission to ensure people feel heard and that the company mission and direction are expressed openly and honestly each week. Throughout the Covid situation, Niantic has been extremely accommodating in the work-from-home environment. Niantic is a proactive tech company trying to lead the world in AR. They're also a game studio. Yet Niantic seems to handle this clash of two different cultures well. There is a firm belief in no-crunch. Health insurance coverage is great.

Cons: The LA office is not the best physical office and not in the best location. Compensation could be a bit higher as well. Hours for the LA office tend to start a little later than normal and therefore end a little later in the day than I desire.

Pros: The mission is fun and most engineers are quite nice.

Cons: The engineering leadership is a bit weak. Technical decisions get made and reversed often, and it seems like the middle manager engineers and product managers are just trying to look good to leadership.

Pros: The effort put in to make the world of Niantic magic is kind of special. Especially with the joy people have for Pokémon around the office and on desks, and seeing large groups of people go nearly daily to do raids in Pokémon Go. It's also great to introduce people to the world of Ingress and secretly form plans against the other Ingress faction. It's nice to really get to know the players of Niantic games because it feels as if they are being made for the people that make it. The teams are still small, so everyone ends up with a lot of responsibility and feels a part of the team, even when you work with people that have been around since the start.

Cons: The amount of people responsible for some large task is sometimes one. It is the downside of teams being small, and it can lead to some very focused moments of stress or crunch. That is the responsibility of the individual to identify and hopefully spread out if there is anyone who is not already in that situation with a different task. There was monetary compensation but no actual help in moving to work for Niantic. This bothered me, but I'm not sure how much of a greater issue this would be. There is some disorganization in the way things get done that has not yet grown to match where the company wants to be. While this is getting better, it worries me how many mistakes could be avoided (but then again, hindsight is 20/20).