Spotify

Salary was pretty good. My stock tripled in value when they bought Joe Rogan. Food and perks were good.

Be really careful what team you get placed on when you start. I got placed into the Financial Engineering org, which operates separately from the rest of the engineering organization. It's much closer to working at a bank than a traditional software engineering organization.

Deadlines are very much done in the "waterfall" model you see in banks, rather than a normal agile sprint organization. Engineering is seen mostly as a cost center function to support financial analysts, and there's very little room for product feedback or creative input from the engineering function.

As for the overall direction of the company, I didn't really get it. I love the music product, but the podcast product is really terrible and is dragging down the rest of the product. All of the all-hands are the company leadership apologizing for terrible things Joe Rogan says. It's just not a place I felt proud of anymore.

Middle management is killing these teams. Standups should not be 45 minutes long! Engineers should have a say in determining sprint goals.

If people join a team and it's not a fit, let them transfer within the organization!