Pros: Lots of autonomy at all levels.

Cons: We're a bit understaffed for what we're trying to accomplish.

Pros: Patreon has a great mission, and many people there are incredibly dedicated to it. It could be a genuinely inspiring place to work at times. The codebase was even clean and pleasant to work in! I learned a ton, and for most of my tenure, I felt supported and appreciated.

Cons: Sometime in 2018, leadership started making really odd decisions, and they haven't stopped. There have been sudden firings, constant thrash on strategy and reporting structure, and vague explanations as to why any of it was happening. It is not a safe or comfortable place to work anymore. Good talent is leaving in droves, and the organization is steadily losing diversity. It's incredibly depressing to watch.

Pros: - Talented and genuine coworkers -- my direct teammates and manager were all helpful and smart. - The mission is easy to get behind, although it's harder to justify a "second renaissance" in this day and age where many other platforms with bigger moats are providing good-enough alternatives. - Top compensation with a high cash component, competitive with other tech unicorns that pay top of band -- although the equity component is pretty overvalued.

Cons: - Lacking medium- and long-term focus. Projects and overarching objectives change very often (sometimes multiple times in the span of a couple of months) without much transparency from leadership. This is expected at a growing company, but the whiplash at Patreon was significantly worse than other (smaller) startups I've worked at. - Has most of the growing pains of a startup without many of the positives. Significant effort is required to get projects started, and developer velocity is slow due to lack of tooling and observability. It's difficult to build confidence for any reasonably sized change. - Lots of areas are lacking an owner, and tech debt isn't prioritized, which dampens velocity. - Ever-looming risk of layoffs (since they've already happened a few times in the company's history).