Pros
Number 1: people people people. I've never worked with so many highly intelligent, friendly, curious, and intrinsically motivated people in my life. This, above all, makes going into Square every day exciting, fun, and rewarding.
- Clear mission. It's even carved into a wall in our new office. "Make commerce easy" Everyone in the company, from engineering to finance to support knows it, creating this really positive energy and spirit of teamwork like "we're all in this together."
- High impact, meaningful work. On the micro scale, it's always so cool when you visit a business running on Square and see your product being used day-in, day-out. On the macro scale, metrics showing the huge number of businesses using Square every day always awes me.
- Incredible learning opportunities. Every engineer is happy and willing to teach something new. I've learned an insane amount!
- Transparency. Almost nothing is secret inside Square. All our metrics are available to all employees. Notes from every meeting are shared - including board meetings. New strategies and products are shown early and often. A huge amount of trust is placed in each of us to keep these secrets but it's incredibly empowering and can even spark new ideas across the company.
- Challenging the status quo. Square is growing and iterating extremely fast. Old processes are quickly questioned and replaced if they get in the way. Employees are encouraged to ask the senior staff anything they want during our weekly "Town Hall" on Fridays.
- Tons of autonomy. Individually, employees have the latitude to work when they want, how they want. Some people get in past 11am & stay later while some work typical 9-5 hours. We have an unlimited vacation policy as well. Engineering teams also have a great deal of autonomy. Each team has full-stack engineers, designers, and product people so they can design, build, and ship their own product.
- Work/Life balance. I usually work around 45 hours a week and am always home for dinner. One engineer even took a whole month vacation recently. There are some who still work insane hours, but managers are actively discouraging it.
- Amazing office & perks. I love having our office downtown instead of traveling far away to some cordoned off campus. It feels like we're really a part of the city. Our restaurant in the building provides us with amazing food, but lots of food trucks and local restaurants are within blocks.
- Hack Week. 4 times a year, the entire company takes the whole week to work on something different. This isn't just for engineers - everyone participates. It brings in a lot of creative energy and has even been the birthplace of some of our products.
Cons
Nothing major. Most of the cons people have written about have been addressed in the last year or so. I have no plans to leave anytime soon! :)
