Wealthfront

I joined Wealthfront as a new college graduate in 2013. I chose Wealthfront over my other offers after spending several hours talking to the VP of Engineering. I was really impressed and had a great onsite interview experience.

The biggest pro of working at Wealthfront has been being surrounded by some of the best and brightest engineers that I've had the chance to work with. The engineering team has impressed me with not only their technical skills but with how helpful they were in helping me get settled in with other areas of my life, such as housing. I moved from the east coast, and several engineers helped me find a place to live by giving me suggestions about the surrounding areas and providing people I could talk to about the areas. Another important thing to me is the location of the office being walking distance from the Caltrain and the company providing Go Passes that allow you to either work or chill on the train instead of being stuck driving in traffic.

Coming straight out of college, I feared I would be stuck doing grunt tasks to start my tenure. Instead, I was assigned to work on an ambitious project to help develop Wealthfront's data platform, which was in the very early stages of development at the time. I was given a great mentor who helped me hit the ground running while learning best practices. I have been able to work with a wide array of new languages and platforms where we tend to favor the latest proven technologies over being stuck on legacy platforms.

The culture at Wealthfront keeps me happy on a daily basis, as I regularly go on walks with my coworkers to discuss ideas involving both work and life in general. In addition, I am able to have regular one-on-one talks with the VP of Engineering to discuss how things are going, such that I feel the company is consistently looking out to ensure I am working on projects I am interested in and growing as an engineer.

As an engineer, you will be on a rotating on-call schedule where you must be available 24/7. Understandable from a business perspective, still not fun.

Do not lower hiring standards either technically or culturally in order to find more people. We have a great culture with people of high technical ability who are also cool people. This makes it a great place to work, and it would be terrible to lose.