Pros
Thumbtack is a really great company with a very strong culture and an obsessive focus on improving itself. Everyone from the engineers to the recruiters to the operations teams are approachable, curious, humble, dedicated to learning, and fun to talk with. The product makes a difference in people's lives and the opportunity is huge, which makes the environment exciting and the work satisfying. Decisions from hires to product changes to ad buys are made in a very thoughtful, rigorous manner, but bad decisions are owned up to and abandoned quickly.
Very little ego or politics within the company, as everyone seems committed to making the best decisions to help the team, and working hard to make that decision making process as analytically rigorous and free from bias as possible. As a start up there are many opportunities for team members to contribute and expand their horizons and leadership offers support for people to figure out and implement new things.
I love coming to work here.
Cons
The relentlessly thoughtful decision making process means that the company can move more slowly than it perhaps should at times. Engineer hiring has proven to be a major bottleneck due to absurdly high standards for new hires. As a result, teams that could get by with less than world-class engineers are left without any engineering resources at all. Also as a result the product has simple, glaring flaws that go left unaddressed, and there are clearly areas of the company set up years ago that have been given no thought in a while as attention is focused elsewhere. Huge opportunity for new hires to fix these things and help this company realize its potential.