Zoox

Great people, reasonably good benefits, excellent work-life balance (for some teams), excellent kitchen crew.

Lots of career stagnation. You either have too many meetings and can't get work done, can't find the documentation needed to get work done, or are too busy trying to turn the crank, leaving no time for actual progression.

Am I glad I joined? Yes. Should you plan for a long career here? No.

If you have a family and aren't already established in the Bay Area, throw the dream of owning a smaller house than expected for more money than you intended out the window.

Renewed emphasis on in-office work, but even if ZARs are worth something eventually, they're not making enough of a dent to get you home ownership locally.

For that, you'll need a series of promotions, but that's going to be hard to accomplish.

First, they'll down-level you upon hiring under the guise of high standards and growth potential. Then, over time, you'll realize you've got to get into the club and play the game to get promoted, rather than just letting all that crank turning be sufficient evidence. And eventually, you'll figure out that your skills are relatively stagnant because of a ton of unnecessary overhead.

But also, perhaps you don't have a PhD. You'll notice you're doing the same work as the person next to you, who does have a PhD, and you've got many more years of actual industry experience, but curiously, they're getting promoted at a much faster rate.

Or maybe you do have a PhD, then you'll be wondering why you're spending all your time prepping slides, attending meetings on the same topic as the last three meetings, and filling in spreadsheets rather than actually using your PhD.

As many around you start to notice the trend and move on, a middle management opportunity will open up for you. You'll take it and be given more direct reports than expected, the opportunity for even slower skills progression, and the responsibility to defend the system that got you to this point.

There are some longer-term employees here. Their demeanor and facial expressions project no excitement.

For the record, love the people, love the perks, love the vehicle, but was not what I hoped for career progression.

Realize you are in a bubble. Hold skip-level meetings two or three levels down. Do some cost of living calculations for an average mid-level employee. Acknowledge that, even if it's high on a national scale, normalized to the Bay Area, it doesn't provide housing opportunities you could get elsewhere. That makes the total compensation package relatively undersized. (It's admittedly already a lot of money, but local economics are kind of crazy.)

We also do not have enough managers. Those we do have are overloaded. It's unsustainable.

We have a ton of work that does not require exceptional candidates. But we are trying to hire exceptional candidates to do work that, quite frankly, would make great projects for interns or fresh graduates. Then we expect these well-experienced engineers to be satisfied with that. It's not an efficient use of people resources.