Good place to build up skills, but not to stay
Pros
The work-life balance is mostly healthy, but on-call is not pleasant. It's worse than any other company I've been at. They throw teams at every problem and hold you on the call even if you are not impacted or related. The office is fun, and has okay perks. The coffee is good and you sometimes get free food. The technology stack is mostly useful, although the Microsoft stack isn't used much at FAANG. So your skills that transfer will mostly be in sys design.
Cons
You will quickly notice how everyone is a slave to their roadmap that is set every year. Teams will openly refuse to unblock your roadmap items that need their support, and will go back on any support they promised to provide. It's unreal and something I do not face at my current company. No one wants to do the right thing for the company, only what's good for them. Relativity promotes people based on things other than performance. Directors and higher give their friends from outside of work the key projects, then use the fact that they led key projects to promote them within a year of their last promotion. They do not offer refresh grants. Your initial grant is what you get and unless you're a favorite of your manager and get promoted that's all you see. They change the rules for certain people. When I onboarded we had a 5 year vesting period. When a certain C level executive was hired she refused that and set it at a 4 year for her and anyone after. What that meant is that people that started within a year before her were fully vested after her, and she did not care.
