Pros
From the outside there is a decent amount to like: -Growing industry based on increasing consumer acceptance and usage, and new markets opening-up in US and abroad -Dynamic fast-paced tech environment -High titles and decent benefits/salaries -Inspiring mission and proclaimed social causes -Really nice people. Note: talent has done a heroic job bringing in smart and kind people to constantly refill frontline and middle management roles.
Cons
It's a sinking ship. -Business model is archaic and hostile to clients. Clients hate working with Weedmaps as the software is buggy/disappointing and the advertising gets more expensive by the day and is declining in value as user quality diminishes. The primary use case of the app remains the discovery of places to buy cannabis. Once you find your go-to delivery or dispensary there is no need to use Weedmaps again. Do you ever go to Beermaps to find your bar or liquor store? -Hyperactivity fetish - in response to the failing business model, leadership is pushing too many product features, too many initiatives, buying too many companies, and changing priorities constantly to paper over issues. This makes frontline employees (engineers, marketers, sales reps, support reps) overwhelmed and breaks systems across the org with little to no benefit. It's chaos. -Org structure is constantly changing and unclear. There is an org change every 6 months. The next one will happen around May/June. Your title may look good, but it's extremely challenging to drive change when you don't know the stakeholders, all directives are top-down and roles are undefined (even by startup standards). I recommend probing in your interviews how the roles and responsibilities are defined. -Mission takes a back seat to a leadership-driven culture that prioritizes getting one's share of a dwindling pie rather than growing the pie for everyone. There is a high level of internal political squabbling and cynicism. It's Demoralizing. -Turnover is high, a lot of people are jumping off the sinking ship. The high turnover makes building a team like building on quicksand. It's a treadmill of constantly getting new people up to speed and reinventing the wheel. New shinny hires get priority over internal promotion and people development. As someone who stuck it out and was able to advance (few do, most quit), it was demoralizing to see the level of activity (50-60 hours a week) not translate into higher impact. I thought my team's oasis we were building was in good shape. Yet we were overwhelmed by the dysfunction in other groups (high turnover, low morale, unclear roles and responsibilities, perpetual org change). It is demoralizing to see talented coworkers languish and leave. Working at Weedmaps is playing on the hardest level without the upside.