Pros
* The people you work with here care about the work and are good at doing it. This was something I loved at my last place, and I'm so glad to again be surrounded by competent people.
There was a thing I came across recently where someone from Netflix was talking about a moment early in their history where they had a big round of layoffs and found that they were "getting more work done with fewer people, and enjoying it more". I think Neverware's unusually stringent hiring process ends up meaning that we've got the kind of people that can get more done with less, and it's inspiring just to see the folks here do so much.
We're all also fairly committed to the company. When we were low on money a couple of years ago and everyone's salary got cut only one person out of ~20 left because of it. We've all been through the ups and downs, and we're all sticking around.
* The trust in people really helps the work happen. You're held accountable for getting your work done, but there's a lot of freedom to do your work the way that's best for you. Want to show up at noon and work until 8pm? That's fine. See a way to improve the team's productivity? You don't need to write up huge planning documents and push it through a big bureaucracy, just do it or chat with your boss to get the extra resources to make it happen.
* Trust in leadership is a big thing, too. It's not perfect, and I don't know that it can ever be with the kind of power imbalance that necessarily exists in a business hierarchy, but I think we do a pretty good job with it. Every month we go through the financials as a company, and Andrew (the CEO) tries to highlight the risks as well as the things that are going especially well. If ever we're in a place where we're going to run out of money again, we'll know long before it happens.
* Communication more broadly. We put a lot of effort into getting better at communication. We've added more structured managerial reviews, and twice-yearly peer reviews (which -- I tear up when I think about all the positive things my coworkers said about me, and I'm really trying to work on and internalize what they highlighted as my weaknesses). Leadership is always experimenting with better ways to communicate larger changes that are coming, and I've seen significant (positive) changes in how the folks on my team interact with each other.
* The food. The weekly freshdirect order is fine, it's nice to have snacks and quick lunch food around. The great thing about the food is this weird collective thing of everyone bringing stuff in all the time. There's Kendall's regular "armenian cheese with nigella seeds", there's Dave and his wife Cat who bake bread & pastries for the office sometimes, there's Karthika bringing karela chips and spicy thatta chips back from india. And then there's the yearly "Neverware Iron Chef" competition: three solid weeks of "apps and 'zerts".
* The product is something I feel pretty good about, too. I believe we've delayed tens of thousands of computers from ending up in the garbage, and I think we've saved thousands of school districts significant sums of money. As we've moved into the "enterprise" space over the past couple of years that's become less of our focus, but it's still something easy to feel good about. If I have to work a job, at least it's not a job building missiles, y'know?
A long time ago I heard this thing about how "there's three things that matter in a job: money, enjoyment of the work, and coworkers/environment. If you've got 2 of the 3 you're in a good place". At Neverware I enjoy the work, I love my coworkers, and I get paid a fair salary for what I do.
Cons
* Money. We're a small startup, and sometimes money is tight. Salaries have been flat for a few years. While the plan is for that to change within the year, it's still been a bit of a drag.
* Sort of as a result of that we often focus on running lean, and I think I'm beginning to see some places where we're running a little too lean and it's going to hurt us in the long run. Working on turning that around.
* The "everyone who works here is great at doing their part" comes at a cost: hiring is really slow. We also are learning how to handle people who aren't doing as well as we expect.
