Zipline

Zipline's compelling mission attracts talent. This sets a high hiring bar which allows us to select the smartest people I ever worked with.

Close to the customer: Engineering's customers are the teams manufacturing and operating the system. It is easy to get feedback from them and the open culture promotes this.

Total compensation is good but biased to equity over cash.

Growing pains: As the team is scaling, maintaining culture while hiring leads and managers has been a challenge. The scrappy and close to customer nature of the work makes it tough to focus.

When things break the expectation is to respond because lives are on the line. This makes for occasional late night calls. Plans and roadmaps often get pushed or scrapped to support operations.