Pros
A few ago I wrote about how this was the best job I ever had. A lot has changed since then, most of it for the worst. You may be fine here, or you may not. It's definitely not a horrible place to work, but it sure seems like it some days when comparing it to how it used to be just a couple years ago. > The vast majority of the people you work with directly are awesome. > Work/life balance is fantastic. There are a days now and again where you are expected to be in the office, but usually you can work from home whenever you need to. > A lot of new projects and technology coming into play in the last year. I don't know anyone in Austin who is still writing Perl code on an ancient monolith anymore. > For the most part, the managers I've worked with over the year have been excellent and most people have a positive relationship with theirs. > The company mission is inspiring, although depending on where you land you might be doing nothing more than moving data around and not feeling inspired by your day job. > Free breakfast tacos on Mondays. Other basic free snacks and drinks are available as well.
Cons
Most of the employees right now are not unhappy. The company has been bleeding talent since last October when they laid off 10% of employees to placate a whiny shareholder. If you decide to accept an offer, you should realize that you are likely replacing someone who quit. > Senior leadership is awful in many ways. No matter how far down the ladder you are, they will make decisions that will negatively impact your morale and career on a regular basis. > The CTO, Prakash Khot, is full of bad ideas but thinks himself an infallible messiah of tech. I've never seen a leader take an organization high in morale and productivity and drag it down so low. Example: he decided a few months back that all teams across the entire company should consist of exactly 3 developers (with few exceptions). Every engineer that I've talked to about it said it is the stupidest idea that they ever heard. > Highly political and back-stabbing environment. The CTO used company-wide layoffs last October to forcefully remove the entire senior leadership team in Austin. These were the best leaders I've ever worked with in my life and did their jobs extremely well, but the CTO resented them for pushing back against his demands and often awful agenda (see: 3 developer teams). Morale in Austin has absolutely plummeted since and shows no signs of recovery. > Low autonomy for certain groups and teams. If you don't have any desire to design anything and are content with just taking orders from above, you'll be fine. > The company is notorious for re-orgs because SLT at the top are incompetent and unable to provide any stability. This often means having your project abruptly canceled (even if it's 99% done) for BS reasons like a change in SLT's "vision". About half of the projects I've worked on have been canceled for one reason or another > Career advancement isn't really based on performance, but more on luck. I've watched many great engineers be held back in their careers because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time (project got canceled on them) or had a manager who was too busy to notice their impact or didn't care. HR has taken notice and is making solid steps to improve this though.
