Pros: 1. Culture: Lots of people with kids/families work here. I personally don't have any, but I like that there is a humane feel to this place because people have a life outside of coding. 2. Collaboration. Everyone is willing to help with everything. 3. Interview process for me personally was also very humane. I still had to do the all-day loops and such, but people were relaxed, and didn't throw a bunch of acronyms at me that you can only know if you worked there. 3. Interesting problems, so much Java. To me, that's a huge plus. 4. "Unlimited" sick days. I didn't test this to see if it's really unlimited. 5. Because people are mostly dope, you can make friends if that's your thing. 6. Principal engineer on my team totally doesn't have to, but always takes an extra effort to mentor me. It makes me wanna work here forever !

Cons: Free bagels are on Fridays. I don't like bagels. Horrible Bellevue commute, but that's not the company's fault. While the 550 is slowly crawling out of Bellevue, it gives you lots of time to question your life choices, like working in Bellevue and living in Seattle. So you wanna pack it in and quit, but where else would you find a team where you actually like to see everyone every day?!

Pros: - Lots of good people work here - Good work/life balance - Flexible remote work (for now)

Cons: - Culture, quality, and just about everything has taken a nosedive since being purchased by Blackrock, et al. in 2025 - Layoffs have been happening, and teams are getting transitioned to India - Benefits have been cut - It is not a good outlook

Pros: Many of the people who work there are honest and hardworking. While most people at the lower levels of engineering are amazing, open, and highly professional, the same cannot be said for upper management.

Cons: The company pretends to listen to their workers and had a practice that led to forced firing of 10% of the workforce each year based upon a bell curve (they called the 9 box) regardless of the employee performing their job to required levels. A few directors and above would regularly make up stories of why an employee might not fit within a certain box even though they don't even know the individual or have ever worked with them. They would then double down and sell it as if it was true. When they are called out, they would just say that it was their opinion but the damage is done since others would then start using what was said as truth to save their own teams from getting moved to lower boxes. They have a written publicly that Senior Engineers II and above are not required to continue to grow; however, many talented engineers were fired with the excuse that they were not growing. My opinion is that this practice was to make the stock look better before year end fiscal statements. They fired 10% (leaning heavy on higher paid individuals) and waited to fill those positions until after the year end fiscal statements were released. Several times, they had to keep telling managers to use the term "performance based" to justify mass layoffs. Now that they are NOT publicly traded (no more stock) anymore, their overall compensation package will struggle to bring in or keep top talent. Many engineers are leaving even though some of the top level leadership were removed.