Pros
- Working with and learning from very smart people - Working at a scale that few other companies in NZ can provide: shipping code to hundreds of thousands of users - Positive, fun culture. The company's values are lived out. - Lots of opportunities within the business as the company grows - Modern tech stack - I've seen numerous people within the company upskill to different roles, and others move to other cities/countries while staying with the company - Xero sees diversity as being important and has a better mix of genders and ethnicities across roles than previous companies I've worked at - The future looks bright for Xero; there's a lot of potential yet to be realised - Accessible senior management - if you ever need or want to, you can email Rod (CEO) and he'll get back to you pretty quick.
Cons
- Your experience of Xero can vary considerably depending on which team you're in, what project or product you're working on, and which office you work in. Some teams are very feature/deadline driven; others are more empowered to focus on quality and do the job right. Some teams have too many meetings and agile rituals. - Legacy code can be a drain, and there is a lot of it hanging around. Progress is being made, but could be faster. - Lots of layers between devs and other parts of the business that would provide valuable insight (sales, marketing, customers). This can make devs feel far away from the problems we're solving. - The profile of the company in the developer world could be a lot better - participation in the open source community, etc.