Roku

Excellent salary and equity.

Ancillary benefits (pet insurance, lactation consultants, etc.) are kept to a minimum, which results in higher individual compensation. This can be a pro or a con depending on your perspective, but I like having more in my pocket rather than a bunch of benefits I will never use.

If you are self-motivated and enjoy taking ownership of your work, you will be rewarded at Roku. The company values performance over tenure.

The mostly-flat structure means there are few obstacles if something needs to happen; you can be the person to drive change rather than hoping that someone in middle management will pick up the cause.

If you like dynamic work environments where you won't be expected to sit in your corner and work on your specific widget, Roku is a great place to be. There are many opportunities to work cross-functionally, and there is a strong focus on collaboration. "Not my job" isn't a thing at Roku.

Overall, the culture is good. Being that the company was founded by an engineer, it is accurate to say that the culture was engineering-centric, which comes with goods and bads depending on where you sit. However, the company now has a much more inclusive culture where everyone's contributions are valued equally. Overall, I think people feel good about working at Roku and how they are treated.

Can be high pressure at times, typically related to release cycles. This is just like every other engineering job I've had.

In engineering, people are expected to take personal responsibility for their work and performance. People are always available to answer questions and help, but Roku isn't the type of place where one can sit and wait to be told what to do next.

There are a few challenging personalities in the engineering group. This, again, is no different from what I've seen elsewhere. Everyone is pushing toward the same goal and has the right motivations, but they are not always communicated well.

Release cycles are prefaced with a lot of planning, documentation, and review. There are understandable reasons for doing it that way at Roku, but it can still be unpleasant if you're accustomed to a documentation-light, rapid change environment. In other words, release planning resembles Waterfall more than Scrum.

Despite the above, there can be some ambiguity and/or churn around requirements. This is almost always the result of a change in business needs and can be seen as a consequence for working at a rapidly growing and evolving company.

Keep empowering individual contributors by providing opportunities to take ownership and drive projects to completion. Try to improve/streamline the release planning process to increase efficiency and facilitate failing fast.