Pros: Really closer to 4.5 stars. - Meaningful problem: Vanta is working on making security dead-simple to prove and continuously verify. This solves a real need for businesses, and has great potential for good. - Breadth of opportunity: Management encourages employees to work on what they find interesting. That coupled with our small size and variety of problems gives a large opportunity for learning and growth. In the time I've been here, I've worked on nearly every part of the site. I've built processes and driven projects both in and out of engineering. If you want to learn about all aspects of a business, this is the place to be. - Rocket ship: Vanta's hit product-market fit. It's profitable. And it's growing exponentially. That's very rare among companies of this size, and it's an exhilarating opportunity. - People: The team is kind, passionate, talented, and receptive to feedback. - Work-life balance: We're a startup, so there's always tons of work to do. That being said, management is sensitive to these challenges and respectful of employee time - on the occasions when workload becomes too heavy, the attitude is "how can we design better processes/resourcing to make sure this doesn't happen again?", rather than ignoring it.

Cons: - Scaling challenges: Rapid growth forces us to reinvent our processes day-to-day. Vanta is doing this well, and it does cause some chaos! - Focus: Since Vanta has so much to do and so much breadth of work, it can be challenging as an IC to make space for long-term problems or projects. This isn't insurmountable, but requires special attention. - Scaling culture: Tripling in size remotely during COVID-19 has presented unique challenges to maintaining our early culture. Leadership has done a good job preserving Vanta's core, but it requires deliberate investment to keep the team communicating as smoothly and thoughtfully as we did before, and Vanta is only just starting to build that muscle.

Pros: Vanta ticked all the boxes for me in my job search. The company's mission to secure consumer data on the internet leads to a positive impact on the world, Vanta's business is growing like crazy (profitable!), and the team is talented and kind. I couldn't have asked to join a better working environment. Given how quickly our business is growing, each week brings a new, exciting challenge. I'm learning and growing and developing my skills along the way, and I'm excited to be here.

Cons: Our rapid growth brings new and different challenges each day, which is to be expected. A company needs to evolve to keep pace with its growth, and Vanta is doing a remarkable job managing these growing pains compared to other places I've worked.

Pros: The company builds remote work into its culture.

Cons: The level I joined was different than I was led to believe during the interview process. Once I joined, I quickly learned my team had an extremely toxic culture. Discussions were based on seniority, not on open discussion, nor were they data driven. I was overtly personally attacked by certain team members and even the team's manager on multiple occasions. When I shared feedback on issues actively blocking my onboarding initiatives, I was met with scathing responses, outright bullying, and a total lack of ownership, both of issues at the team level and on issues directly caused by team members themselves. I learned within a few weeks that engineers preferred leaning back on comfortable, known patterns instead of using the correct tools and processes for problem solving, even if it led to increased maintenance costs, developer time expenditure, and overall lower system quality and functionality. This at least partially explains why the tech stack was in such a disastrous state during my time on the team. I could forgive this fact if the team were open and engaged, but they proved to not only be the opposite, but to actively punish opposing viewpoints instead of fostering them, opting to play favorites with team members. Ultimately, it was not an environment I felt safe reporting blockers or giving feedback of any kind. During my debrief, my manager immediately turned my feedback against me, so I did not provide any other feedback.