intense rocketship startup - hang on for life
Pros
- company has went from 0 to 250 employees in the course of 3 years; planning to get to 1000 employees by year 4. quite literally the definition of a rocketship. - fast growing companies means really wide swim lanes because everyone is juggling a lot of projects. If you want to tackle a new initiative or try a new approach to an existing problem, you simply give a heads up in slack and that problem is yours to own. no one is going to fight you for visibility; no one is going to try to block you for politics reasons. - people are always supportive and will share their ideas with you on approaches you might have never thought of before. can't speak for other teams outside of engineering, but the people are definitely some of the best people i've worked with - bright people who are passionate about the problem being solved. people come from impressive backgrounds; yet are humble good and kind people. - the problem being solved is a good problem. everyone has bad days when they question what they’re doing at work. but the goal of this company is pretty clear; and when you speak with the plaintiffs who have benefitted from this service, it does give you the morale booster that helps picks you up. company isn’t in the business of selling sketchy ads or trying to get more info from its users. it’s doing a legitimate job that has pretty positive impacts on people who otherwise would’ve gotten screwed over by the messed up legal system we live in - well funded; just raised a ton of money; probably has over 4 years of runway.
Cons
- startup life is startup life. can be chaotic and really stressful with rapid deadlines and changing priorities. - pay is not as good as big tech; you take the hit on pay but in exchange you get the autonomy to try new things and get direct exposure to things you otherwise wouldn't be able to. you also bet on the upside growth of the company. - not a 9-5 job. you’re always thinking about it. when you’re in bed scrolling through twitter at night and see a post about some new research that came out, you start posting on slack to share it and all of a sudden people are starting to respond and talk about it. - there’s no market solution to the problem so no one knows whether the problem can even be solved. there’s no literature to review or past techniques to apply; for better or worse, a lot of things are invented and people roll with it - at the same time, the race to solve the problem is heating up and a ton of people with resources (from startups to big companies) are all trying to tackle the same problem.