Pros
- Educational for junior specialists - Interesting product - Recognizable brand, that attracts smart people
Cons
- Management varies from under-powered to absurdly unqualified - Promotion is based on loyalty, not on skills - No career ladder - No professional development, no budget for learning. No guarantees they pay towards your travel expenses even if you speak at a professional conference - No professional bands, salary is not based on merit, hence the pay gap is often unbelievably huge - Very silo-ed culture that amplifies already significant technical debt - Lots of politics - Blog-driven development, that has usually nothing to do with your job. You’ll have to clean up the mess after the rock-stars move to new shiny projects - Not an equal chance employer: if you don’t kiss the right place - you are doomed to be treated as a second-class citizen - Communication is often problematic even within teams, cross-team collaboration is almost non-existent - Stolen ideas, claiming undue credit is not an accident, some employees intentionally sabotage their colleagues - People team are useless - CEO rules by intimidation, COO is weak - Cheap on everything: from tiny desks to business flights without baggage - Most of the talent does not stay longer than 2 years or waits for the IPO to quit shortly after - Leadership asks employees to write positive reviews on Glassdoor; on bad reviews they comment to bring it up with your manager - but managers usually ignore any feedback from employees - Benefits are poor, equity is meaningless - Burnout is common - After realizing they are a company of white dudes - they started intentionally hiring minorities to improve the numbers, but fail to attract anyone senior - Belittling employees that left the company
