Uber

Startups love to talk about how they're 'killing it,' even though usually they're just struggling to survive to their next round of funding. The focus on Uber isn't on 'killing it' — everyone knows we're already doing that; we want to know what we can do to kill it faster.

Compensation is extremely competitive and includes something that no other company can offer: equity in one of the fastest-growing companies in history. Even now, Uber is out of its infancy and continuing to double revenues every six months.

Transparency within the company is a big part of our culture. There's a weekly meeting where anyone in the company can ask the CEO a question and get an honest/unfiltered response.

You get to work with a lot of extremely talented people from a wide variety of backgrounds. I've met people at HQ from six different continents, and I'm currently the only male engineer on my team. Diversity is a common buzzword these days, but at a company as small and simultaneously global as Uber, it's also a reality.

The company is growing extremely fast; sometimes there are more people than desks, and working arrangements can get very... 'cozy'. With that growth comes lots of change, and you will feel very uncomfortable if you are used to being in a predictable environment.

Work/life balance may be a deal-breaker for some. We're trying to grow the team as fast as the number of problems we're facing is growing, but sometimes the latter outpaces the former, and the days can get very long. The work is usually still exciting. I've never been told to work on a weekend, but I have voluntarily spent a few at the office building something I wanted to make.