Pros
- Flat organization chart. If you're not a Manager/Director, you're an Engineer. There is not as much rank-pulling here compared to other companies I've been to - Pay is actually not bad, contrary to what some people say (for US offices, at least) The "secret" here is that a large chunk of your income comes from RSU's which are awarded based on your performance in the first year or two - Most people are very smart, motivated, and helpful - The CTO and Engineering VP's are true engineers, and are intelligent people. - Good work-life balance. Generally, there is no crunch and you can work at your own pace - of course, there are exceptions for certain strategically important projects with timelines set by external factors, but these are few - Company culture has remained good for the above reasons (but more on that later)
Cons
- Tools are slow and occasionally not stable, and have not scaled well with company growth. Instead of addressing problems in existing tools, the tools team tends to create new tools and meta-tools to partially work around those problems. Bugs in tools often go unfixed in favor of new development as well. - Lack of documentation. Most knowledge seems to be transferred via word of mouth, and on-boarding new people is longer than it needs to be. This is becoming especially painful with more people joining the company, and with everyone working from home. - Arista uses a proprietary programming language (learning which is a skill that won't transfer to anywhere else), and is also poorly documented