Pros
May is the most interesting, diverse, quirky, intelligent group of people I've ever been welcomed into. Working at May for 3 years, starting when there were only 20 people, growing to over 100 has been dizzying and magical. It has been pretty much the best way to learn the nitty gritty of building a complex company from nothing, as good as it gets, if yer into that kind of thing. Seeing and understanding the how and why of company building as it happens, rather than just finding ourselves in an environment that's already set up and mature like a large well established facebook, just invaluable and rare to get to be a part of... Not to mention that omg, really, I get to design autonomous vehicles?! I wonder if we do enough to empower people to shape May into the company they want it to be, cultivating the attitudes necessary to make doing that hard thing possible... It's definately part of the job, and maybe some people aren't used to having such lattitude to shape the environment as we grow. For me the growth has been amazing, in that we get to focus more on our strengths and interests over time, filling in the gaps as we hire. We're all figuring out how to do this together. It's not just set up to work well, we need to actually make it what we want, the hard way, by trying stuff. Just my 3-year perspective, looking forward to another 3 years, it NEVER gets boring.
Cons
Constant change and uncertainty can wear people down, pacing oneself is important, encouraged, but often not practiced by very driven people. I think we're making even a greater effort to prevent burnout.
