Senior Software Engineer • Current Employee
Pros: The initial compensation package is the only good thing. Don't be fooled by it, though. Just look at our stock trajectory and you'll realize why it's so high. I joined last year and I'm already 50 percent underwater compared to my joining price. Turns out I actually took a pay cut compared to my last job. There are also constant comp plan changes, which makes being an employee very uncomfortable.
Cons: Where to start.
1. Incredibly disorganized for a small company. You'll find multiple teams doing the same work, fighting over credits, and playing the blame game.
2. Thrash with nothing to show for it. Your lead will tell you to drop everything and work on this urgent item at 11 am, but by 7 pm you need to drop that urgent item for another item that they want done yesterday. The WLB is bad, and there's no progress to show for it.
3. There is rushed and poorly thought-out code everywhere. The infrastructure is not in place to support good engineering. Sometimes the build times could exceed an hour, when at my last FAANG company, it would be 15 minutes max with a much larger scale product.
Overall, I definitely wouldn't join Snap. If you have an offer in hand, my advice would be to ask a lot of questions about what it means: strike price, on-going equity, out-performance equity, all that. Don't be tricked by the big numbers, like myself.