Pros
I joined Fastly as employee #20 (interviewed as #15) and have always felt that the company and its leadership was accessible, humorous, and open to new ideas. Since then, the company has grown by almost 10 times in terms of staff. The relaxed, open culture has been maintained and I've found it easy to have productive professional relationships with people across the company. Hard work is recognized and rewarded. Management is passionate not only about the market goals but the technology innovated at the company. This permeates into different internal organizations, and it shows. Sales people are excited to sell the product. Marketing people are excited to enable people to talk about our products and services. Engineers love the hard problems that need to be solved daily. HR / office administration are all super friendly and easy to talk to. There is a culture of nipping things in the bud before they become overly problematic. Whether talking about technical debt, problematic personal interactions, or whatever -- senior management and HR are always open and available to talk to. Furthermore, honesty is appreciated and that is shown. Collaboration is encouraged, and for a sufficiently gregarious person, it should be easy to approach anybody at the company. I've connected with many new people here. We have regular all hands status meetings. They are now less frequent than they were when I started, but the point is that the company is transparent with its employees about everything from exciting new projects to financials. We have a culture of learning. Employees regularly engage in spare-time activities to further the skills of their colleagues -- activities ranging from teaching MIT OCW material to various forms of sportsball to helping others with CFPs, slides, and presentations. Standard perks, catered lunches, dog-friendly office, yadda yadda. I don't have a view that Fastly is a nepotism. Certainly people who have been there the longest have moved up the highest. However, this isn't true in all cases; there are effectively founding members still working on the front lines of product management. As a new employee, I was welcomed and respected; it seems this trend continues. I don't have a view that Fastly is cliquish. I have found it easy to interact and speak with almost everybody who has made it into the office. There are a few shy folks around who I haven't spoken to much. Between mingling with various crews at our semiweekly catered lunches and our all-hands meetings where new employees are introduced, I think we do a pretty job of breaking down walls. It's possible that all of this is my white male privilege speaking, some kind of shielding from the BS of normal company flow I might experience from having a "coveted" engineering position, or a combination of the two. (I've kind of gotten the idea that people think engineers are treated specially in the Bay Area.) This may be true, but I don't know about it.
Cons
Every positive review is looked at skeptically, especially in the presence of any negative review(s). (Though I'd argue any review should be looked at skeptically, regardless of its tone. This is the Internet. Glassdoor didn't even try to perform any validation that I am, in fact, a current employee.) There are negative aspects to working at Fastly that I have experienced, so hopefully that will inspire some confidence in my review. It can be easy to overwork yourself at Fastly. Being excited about the product combined with the sheer volume of work there is to do to get the company to really succeed in the market can drive a workaholic to tears. I hear that things are actually changing to address this issue, but until something formal comes out, I think it remains a valid concern. Compensation and benefits could be better for a company of this size. And while I've seen many people move around, having new roles carved for them, I've also seen many stagnate. Again, there's been talk about making career advancement happen without moving up the management ladder, but until that happens, it remains a concern. I worked as a remote employee for the first year-and-a-half of my employment. This was difficult for a number of reasons, but I did feel like without being in the office, I was being left behind. I have moved to the Bay Area to work at the office and that largely ameliorated my concerns. I can understand how a remote person could find working for Fastly difficult. I don't know what the remote experience is like, though I know we retain several remote people across organizations. I'd encourage the company to continue to try to support those people to the best of their ability. To that respect, working as a remote employee can be difficult here, and I wouldn't really recommend it. While I don't think Fastly is cliquish, I can see how people could think that. While I think some of that can be solved by simply approaching more people, I also don't want to blame the victim. I would encourage Fastly employees to be more gregarious and inclusive in general.