Pros: It's in the city. Engineers are self-directed, and management is horizontal. Engineers are friendly, have a strong sense of humor, and are happy. The company thoroughly has faith that you're self-driven and will get your stuff done. This is a big gamble, since some engineers may take advantage of this, but from my experience, most engineers still work hard and are dedicated to the success of the company. They're liberal in terms of working from home and coming in whenever you want to. There are unique opportunities available in specific areas as this company continues to grow rapidly, especially for engineers interested in: * Search * Spam detecting * Machine learning * Data mining

Cons: The awkward division between sales and engineering, which is obvious by reading other reviews. The culture and goals of each are completely different. They might as well be two companies. None of this gets explained to you. Yelp is a sad place for designers or design-minded folk, at least for the time being. Yelp hires very few real designers and leaves most design work to product managers, who typically only have a technical background. Being a public company forces product to give priority to short-term revenue over building great products. For example, banner ads are all over the site, and many of these ads are not only ugly but directly contradict Yelp's mission of connecting people with local businesses (e.g., Taco Bell). In many ways, Yelp is very corporate, as much as they would hate to admit it. Terribly inefficient workflows and outdated internal tools are maintained despite constant griping. Important decisions often go unquestioned. Quality is not job one. The politics of priority or "MVP" prevent good ideas from even seeing the light of day.

Pros: 1. Competitive salary 2. There are some really fantastic engineers

Cons: 1. Fear-driven work culture 2. Disillusioned leadership 3. Terrible work hours, zero work-life balance 4. No regular lunches like in other companies

Pros: Yelp is a great place for an engineer of any level of experience to learn and have important impact. The culture and work-life balance is really great and something emphasized as important on a team level and org-wide. Managers genuinely care if you are able to work on things you want to work on and balancing writing new code versus maintaining legacy systems. I'm surprised how well the company still feels small despite the growth; each engineer can have a strong impact on the organization. Onboarding and mentor training is given a lot of attention to streamline new hires and interns. Interns are given really important projects, underscoring how change is largely driven from the bottom up, where good ideas win.

Cons: Nothing is perfect, but when I hear about other companies' cultures (and in some cases, dysfunctions), my issues are small. Often, new projects require justification and planning, which are mostly necessary, but the process can slow progress. As an engineer becomes more senior, more trust is given, and the engineer becomes more familiar with the right process to get things done.