Spotify

• Great product to use
• Interesting tech to work on
• Tons of potential for new products and features
• Opportunities to learn
• CV booster
• Will probably continue to succeed

• Frequent backstabbing in Tech and Management.
• Aggressive internal power struggles.
• Endlessly restructuring teams. "Re-org" at least twice per year.
• Most of middle-management was promoted into jobs they don't know how to do, so they accomplish nothing.
• Upper-management absent. Who knows what they do? "Upper Management" is ultimately responsible for the problems at "the bottom", so Upper Management is not doing a good job.
• "Owning" a product or feature is inevitably a terrible curse.
• Nonsensical career growth program.
• Dismiss all problems as "growing pains".
• Discourage – even punish – maintenance of existing features. All that matters is writing new things. Mostly rewriting the same things again and again.
• Constant feeling of panic and pressure. Always under-staffed, but always accepting new projects. Upper/middle management accepts the projects, and controls the (lack of) staffing, and then shifts the blame to the devs/designers/QAs/BDs.
• Infinite meetings. Don't be surprised if you're triple-booked all day. Position doesn't matter. Same for devs, QAs, designers, managers. Senior and junior.
• Certain people have much more power and influence than their positions are supposed to have. Upper management encourages it. Power comes from being in the right management clique.

Stop pretending that meetings and long-winded Google Docs are work. People spend so much time talking about what they would do that they never have time to actually do anything. Stop encouraging POs and squads and tribes to compete against each other.