Robinhood

1. You are given a lot of ownership over a very impactful project.

2. Surrounded by smart, hungry, humble, friendly people. Many people have worked at top tech companies (e.g. FB, Google, Airbnb).

3. Those who excel are given opportunities to demonstrate excellence (e.g. 3 of all 22 interns presented their projects at all-hands in front of the entire company).

4. Compensation and benefits are really good, but this doesn't matter at our age. What matters is the learning.

5. Super fast-growing company → tons of opportunities to jump out of your comfort zone to learn something new.

These cons are not significant compared to the pros:

• Much higher mental pressure/stress because you're given a lot more responsibility. But that pressure is a natural side effect of doing something big.
• Not as many people know about Robinhood's caliber, so you won't get name recognition like you would at Google.
• Almost no documentation when onboarding to new backend services, so it was difficult at the beginning.

The main thing I benefitted from was management recognizing excellence and giving me more opportunities to learn and excel. In retrospect, I wish I had had more frequent 1-on-1s with my manager, but I probably should have just asked.