Spotify

Mandatory on-call.

The document-driven way of working has its place, but most teams are overly focused on producing RFCs, although quite often there are more suitable alternatives. While documentation is important, using documents as the main vehicle to share complex ideas makes the feedback loop much longer than it needs to be. This gets incredibly frustrating.

Many middle managers are inexperienced and provide limited value. Having worked with many squad managers at Spotify, it is obvious that they are very ill-informed on the company's direction, and they are mainly hired for delivery accountability. Many of them are also disinterested in career management, hence Spotify is not a good place for an engineer unless you are very junior or senior.

Last but not least, the compensation is horrendous. Expect a significant loyalty tax. Over the last few years, many existing benefits that made up for the low TC have gone away.