Patreon

Amazing creative energy permeates the entire company. People make art and music, write, draw, dance, stream, and create. Many did so professionally before working at Patreon, and some continue those careers alongside. If you're the creative type, there's nothing else like working here.

Following from that: a real commitment to creators. Many of us here have friends who rely on Patreon for a living, and others know first-hand what it was like to do so, so we understand the responsibility that working here entails.

Well-built and maintained development tools exist in some areas, especially for a startup. Need to reproduce a bug reported by a creator? Impersonate them on prod without the risk of affecting their data. Want to canary a change before committing? A simple Slack command.

Patreon feels like a much larger and much older software company than it actually is. There is so much legacy code, and inertia against new patterns/architecture leads to straightforward (on the surface) projects becoming bogged down by too many stakeholders. Your ability to get things done hinges on the influence that your EM or Director has in the overall org.

Diversity and inclusion is talked about a lot and often feels like second nature (and there's no song and dance about it, pun intended). But all the work done in ERGs is done by the people affected, with very little systemic support and no appetite by management to actually make big changes. If you're in an under-represented group (like I am), be prepared to do all the labor yourself while leadership pats itself on the back about how great the DEI culture is.

Overuse of in-house code that nobody really understands for functionality that could be easily accomplished using open-source libraries. This is a legacy problem that's changing, but not quickly (see inertia above).

If TDD or anything testing-heavy is in your development style, you're unfortunately going to have a bad time.