Not to be dramatic, but Square has radically improved my life
Pros
- The people. Lovely people to work with who are incredibly helpful. You often hear rhetoric at other companies like "we're /disrupting/ and changing the world", but at Square, you'll find that people are more humble about the mission of economic empowerment and people have full lives outside of Square. - Product ownership is huge here. I feel like I get to weigh in on decisions for product, and innovate on our products with new ideas. - Engineering excellence. I worked at startups before this, where engineering was haphazard and unfocused. Here you learn how to build incredibly performant, secure products that integrate with a global payments stack - Career ladder is well defined for software engineers. Clear paths for I.C.s vs management roles and my EM's have all been very receptive to my career goals. - Perks are amazing. Free lunch and breakfast everyday (I wish we still had free dinner) and lots of other freebies that are icing on the cake when picking a job. - It's in the best location in S.F., in mid-market. Incredibly close to Hayes Valley, the Mission, Alamo Square, etc.
Cons
- Tension between having an ecosystem of products that are all working towards their own goals, while needing to collaborate with other teams where roadmaps were not aligned between teams - Company feels less transparent as we get bigger - Honestly, I wish we still had the free dinner perk. It made it really easy to not have to cook on a weeknight if I was working late. Buuuut it was overall really great that they cancelled dinner service because I have a better work-life balance leaving work earlier instead of working later to get dinner.
