Pros: Friday lunches catered, a great working environment, strong team members, high mobility within the company, and low churn.

Cons: Poor 401k matching, middle-of-the-road benefits and compensation, restrictive remote working policies. On-call work breaks into work-life balance (should have Mondays or Fridays off during on-call rotation).

Pros: Work-life balance is not bad.

Cons: The manager in the team I was working in is the worst manager ever. She treated the team members like cogs in a big machine, not like people.

Pros: Yelp is a company with a big and solid user base. Lot of traffic, lot of load, lot of things you will probably never get a chance to work with and issues to resolve, working for a startup. Yelp is not one of FAANG and generally speaking a medium-sized business. The engineering department looks fairly lean. This means it is quite unlikely the board is going to dump hundreds of workers in the end of a year to improve financial reports – a practice quite common in big companies. Can't tell about other departments, but the culture in engineering is nice and chill. I worked as a contractor with big companies previously, and it was a breath of fresh air since I've joined Yelp. Opportunities for growth – plenty of them. Yelp is a public company; you are not paid in promises. Shares you get are convertible to real money instantly. Office – a skyscraper in downtown SF limits the ability to build an open space, and you can actually make your/team space quite cozy. On-call schedule is not brutal. Downtown SF – plenty of opportunities before/after work: concerts, bars, tech meetups.

Cons: Most of these apply to the folks who plan to work in the office. They tell nothing for remote folks. * You won't buy a Lambo after IPO; the company is already public. * You go out and pay for your food yourself; no daily deliveries, just cafeteria and snacks. * No dry cleaning service. * No gym. * No showers (critical if you're biking). * No Uber/Lyft credit to get to/out of the office. You pay for your transportation/parking yourself. You can pay for BART/Muni/parking pre-tax, though. * Downtown SF is the filthiest place west of the New York City Subway. * You have options: either live in SF and dump a lot of money into rent, or waste a lot of time commuting.