Pros: Pay is okay. WLB is kind of better than average companies.

Cons: I have no idea how Pinterest successfully hired so many junior and incompetent managers in mid-management. They are too junior to make good judgment on the product roadmap and technical direction. I’ve worked with three different managers, and all of them are arrogant.

Pros: Great overall culture. It's small enough to build strong coworker communities and rethink fundamental systems, but big enough to have the volume and resources for ambitious systems to matter. Compensation is very good if you're a strong negotiator and have experience that Pinterest needs. Find good referrals.

Cons: Pinterest is unlike Facebook or Google in that it's still a smaller, pre-IPO company where the organizational plate tectonics haven't finished cooling. I don't recommend it for more junior engineers because they can get lost in the cracks of these shifts until they wise up. Junior engineers and new grads without a lot of internship experience should go to a FAANG first.

Pros: Good benefits for a startup. The product potential is there. Beautiful office space, free food. Founders seem to really care about diversity initiatives. People are generally very nice.

Cons: External managers who claim to be veterans are introduced by non-technical folks and have been acquired by the company. These engineering leaders often lack the technical expertise to gain respect from the workhorse class. These supposed leaders look great on paper, know the talk and political games very well after many years in industry. But they are often very out of touch with the data and technical issues to effectively deal with product problems. Acquihires might be the only way Pinterest has been able to attract talent in recent quarters, but instead of scaling up productivity, these players are brewing a very toxic and disruptive environment. Plenty of management shuffle is also going on at the non-technical leadership level, and the future is very uncertain now. Given both the technical debt at the leadership level and the preference structure of product, design, and engineering, Pinterest might not be a very good place for developing engineering careers. Finally, a simple cross-check on who was highlighted in external company videos and how many of them have departed the company is a clear indication of the organizational struggles the company has been through in the past 1-2 years.