Solid fast-growing company. Awesome work!
Pros
The work is great. There is no shortage of a diversity of problems to solve. If you like a challenge and are self-directed (especially if you like algorithms and math), this is the company for you. It's a new one every day, and there are endless opportunities to learn and grow. Creativity is encouraged. Great culture and teammates. It's positive, collaborative, warm, and supportive. I feel comfortable asking for help, and a great sense of belonging and community, even as a someone who checks a diversity box. My experience has been delightfully low on the tech-bro-culture BS-meter (it is a massive improvement over every place I've worked previously). It's such a cool mission, who wouldn't want to work on autonomous vehicles. And as usual, the cushy tech perks are nice too, without all the risk of a smaller, less well-funded venture. And the office is in the city!
Cons
We're growing so fast that management and technical leadership is spotty. This is perfectly expected for a unicorn, and it's just growing pains. We're struggling to hire experienced managers fast enough, so we're left with mostly engineers or early hires thrown into management and leadership roles out of desperation, some of whom are doing well, and some are struggling in that role. Your experience, like anywhere, depends a lot on your manager (I happen to have a good one). We're trying really hard to improve the situation, but so is every other tech startup in the area and it takes time to find the good ones. However, this creates an opportunity for self-directed work and bottom-up planning and decision-making, which is fun, and probably really effective. The engineers work directly with each other across teams, confirm there is support for it from leadership, and ship awesome stuff anyway.
