PayPal

I realized the extent of my burnout when there was an email hyping third quarter: "Lots to launch, we’re in a marathon but start sprinting." Four weeks later, another email came about management's refreshing 2-week vacations. It spoke of the realization of how important it was to recharge and how good it was to step away for time with their families, yet it's still 3rd quarter, so "keep sprinting."

For the majority who can’t take time off due to an overload of varying production deadlines and escalations, and who start their workday earlier and end them later just to keep up, this came across as exceptionally tone-deaf. Making it worse was an all-hands discussing how to ensure a better work-life balance: "Here, read some slide decks."

What finally convinced me to write this review was when a dev colleague told me after he’d been diagnosed with a serious illness, his manager asked if he could take on an additional product launch to the ones he's currently handling. In short, it’s your own damn fault if you can’t manage self-care, regardless of the workload.

Pros:

• Good health benefits
• 401k match
• ESPP program
• RSUs
• Commuting reimbursements
• Roth 401k
• Track-free vacation - no need to put in a request for time off weeks in advance

Cons:

• The 2020 COVID "moonshot" attitude focus, aka “all hands on deck/sprint to you drop, people!”, is now the workstyle norm.
• Reports overload. Multiple, often duplicate reports must be done each week. Even if there was no movement, something must get added (punctuation change, word deletion) otherwise it’s a mark against you.
• Rampant "Yes Man" culture in meetings where people race to add their “wow, fantastic insight!” comments in the meeting chat just to get noticed for promotion.
• Quarterly team re-orgs that are just constant churn / chaos.
• Layoffs in January/early February (avoids bonus payout).
• Promotions are difficult to achieve. The process is pretty much where the manager who shouts the loudest in the ranking meeting gets the promotions.
• Fewer RSU awards.
• Tracking free vacation is almost impossible to use due to the workload. Most people end up only taking 2 weeks at the end of the year.

None. They won't listen.

Best advice to people reading this is to know what you're getting into, learn what you can, grow as you can, then move on to another company.