Pros: Slack has been a really unique experience. Slack is owned by Salesforce, but has not been entirely integrated into the corporate experience (though we trend closer to integration every month). The developer experience has been strongly employee driven, and the engineers are very passionate about maintaining what makes Slack great. The codebase is primarily Hacklang, which is an interesting PHP variant. I really hated it at first, but after having worked with it for some time, I find it relatively easy to write and follow. When you start, everyone is very understanding that it takes 6+ months to really get a full grasp on the language and our codebase. Using AI is encouraged, but not explicitly required like at some tech shops. Coding LLMs are not necessarily great at Hacklang, but the more recent models have been getting better.

Cons: Creeping corporatization. Huge, hundreds-to-thousands-of-employee meetings where absolutely nothing of any import is said. Massive priority shifts recently as the Agentforce bet flopped, and a revitalized push into agents.

Pros: They give a lot of swag, work pace isn’t too hard, and mid-level people are generally nice.

Cons: This company ruined my life and PIP’d me for taking time off to mourn. They took from me my passion for what I do and made me realize how quickly someone will throw you under a bus. Scheming managers. They did a soft layoff where they were forced to PIP a certain number of employees, and I had never had a performance conversation or a negative comment. The manager fabricated evidence for a PIP (including asking for advice, taking sick time when my dad died, and calling in a senior engineer during a high severity outage). I’ve personally spoken to multiple other engineers that had the exact same thing happen to them.

Pros: Great engineering stack, good base pay, friendly teammates, and time-off.

Cons: Equity has mostly evaporated since the Salesforce acquisition.