Pros: • Perfect combination of support and responsibilities, especially for a software developer fresh out of school. There is plenty of room to make mistakes, but also high enough expectations to encourage improvement. • The work is creative and allows you as a developer to work with cutting-edge technology, solving open-ended problems which may have never yet been attempted. • The working environment is friendly and everyone is willing to take the time to answer your questions. The employees are all very humble but also very competent, which means you will have plenty of experts in different fields willing and able to guide you.

Cons: Many technologies used in everyday work need to be updated to make work easier for programmers. For example, the update to C++11 and Python 2.7 still hasn't been made, let alone updating to C++14 and Python 3.6. There are several other outdated technologies in use, but these two are the biggest offenders. While the general experience of working on a large team and contributing to a massive project with a groundbreaking approach is very relevant, the actual day-to-day work is so unique that it will likely not make you more employable on its own.

Pros: Compensation and benefits (including lunch allowance) are above average by Toronto standards. The office here is a 20+ people outpost of the Santa Clara headquarters, focused on engineering hires and growing. Team culture is friendly, professional in conduct but casual in tone, and diverse, both here and throughout the entire company. The bar for new hires is medium-high, leading to a consistently competent team and respect among coworkers because I can assume that everyone in the company knows their stuff. Work hours are genuinely flexible. Leads are awesome, intelligent, listening to and supporting their teams, and make rational decisions. There are lots of interesting challenges to work on; people can move around tasks and teams according to their interests and strengths. Learning opportunities abound. For Toronto, we have bi-weekly Friday Happy Hours (in-house or at a pub) as well as a soccer team. Company finances are communicated transparently in quarterly meetings; the company is well-funded and on a solid growth trajectory. Engineers often have direct contact with clients/partners. Travel sometimes takes you to places such as Tokyo, Paris, or the Bay Area. The resulting product is useful and without ethical concerns or conflicts of interest for either party. Recent initiatives for internationalization and empowering external developers are exciting and a push in the right direction.

Cons: More work needs to be done in order to scale the company. Server builds are slow. CI infrastructure doesn't prevent breakage (although testing prevents breakage from getting pushed to production). Too much developer time is wasted. Code infrastructure for NLU is owned by or depends on a single person who isn't really looking for suggestions or contributions and is already overbooked. Machine Learning tech and capacity doesn't currently approach what Google can do. No company-sponsored open source contributions or conference visits.

Pros: Used to have good perks and a nice office culture.

Cons: - Management not very transparent. - Not enough room to grow; feel isolated and left out.