Pros: - cool problems - coworkers are awesome - can take as much ownership as you want

Cons: - low pay for high quality people - they will fire you unless you are excellent - they might fire you even if you are excellent but someone decides your role is no longer needed

Pros: Many years ago, you could do cool things here. They wouldn’t let you finish or actually look at your work, but you could have a moment or two. The shares might be worth a lot some day. The technology isn’t hard to learn.

Cons: I’m the person who criticized my boss when he made fun of Israelis (when the head of a different team was from Israel). I’m the person who stood up when the same executive regularly made derogatory jokes about cultures of folks on other teams. They still work at Zipline. During Covid, we were one of those companies that had a huge expectation that folks who worked with hardware (other teams too) came in daily. It didn’t matter if you could do your work remotely, you needed to come to a daily meeting so packed that folks were sitting on the floor. I resisted that pressure, especially when cases were high, and my boss generally ghosted me in our 1:1s and any other meetings I tried to get his feedback with. Other executives spent the whole pandemic saying it was a joke, even dogs get it! …imagine this is how the company handles safety or any situation. When your executive leadership is all old friends, and they cite their friendship as the reason they’re hired, they can do stuff like that, and you can’t get help from anyone. In return for standing up, I was bullied more. I got talked down to by my boss at every chance. He avoided me, but when I caught him, he made fun of my accent. I had my work activities change from a lead engineer’s work to trivial silo work. Also, I was invited to sessions where that same executive yelled at me and tried to humiliate me for work he didn’t bother to look at or allow me to speak for. Other folks mentioned salaries, I’m mentioning specifics, so here is what I made of the cool mission tax: Salary comparison: I was paid 10% more at the job before and 30% more at the job after.

Pros: - Cutting-edge technology and meaningful mission in healthcare logistics - Opportunity to work on complex engineering problems across multiple domains

Cons: I watched the engineering culture deteriorate significantly. Senior leadership became increasingly disconnected from the day-to-day realities of the engineering organization. The influx of management from Tesla brought a shift from collaborative problem-solving to a culture where people deflect blame rather than take ownership. The company doesn't compensate based on merit unless you're adept at self-promotion and political maneuvering. Technical achievements across multiple domains went uncelebrated, while fire-fighting was consistently rewarded over preventative engineering that would eliminate crises altogether. Many managers appeared to advance through personal relationships rather than demonstrated competence or leadership ability. Credit for engineering work routinely flowed upward to managers while the actual contributors remained invisible. The unlimited PTO policy sounds attractive but is effectively limited in practice, creating ambiguity and discouraging people from actually taking time off.