Good but mediocre leadership - Software Engineer Figma Employee Review

- great culture - impactful team

- actually i enjoyed my time at Figma

* decent work life balance. I don't think there's a hustle culture per se * leadership is exceptionally smart and personable (but see issues on execution below) * humble eng team, few egos

My biggest shock when I joined this company was just how bad the execution on the product team actually is. I had assumed a company with a beloved product must have an excellent product org, but far from it! Seems like most of Figma's successes were accidental, or due to some early engineers' visionary work. Mainly, this company does not know how to ship AI products incrementally. Specifically the org that builds Figma AI is constantly stuck in the cycle of: * CEO gets scared by something on Twitter * Product engineers rush to build a demo for new features that'll "save the company" * Prototype gets rushed, customers are unhappy * Overpaid team of PhD researchers gets pulled in to hill climb on quality, but takes too long to make meaningful progress * Customers get even more angry * Product team adds(!) scope * The market has moved on to the next shiny AI thing * We scrap the project, or are asked to do the next, even bigger thing * ... and so on, ad infinitum, but no meaningful AI products ever ship. But hey, they pay pretty well!