Pros
Excellent culture. People are cheerful, humble and overall seem to be excited about their work. I actually get to take vacation here unlike other “unlimited vacay” places and it really helps manage and prevent burnout. The remote policy is great, but the office is pretty good too, with catered lunch, makes me feel like I’m missing out a bit. The work is challenging and rewarding. There’s a decent amount of senior people who are good mentors. The stack I work with is pretty modern, I had to work with some gnarly ancient libraries in this industry. We are also allowed to do short spikes and explore new/different tech and submit proposals. Meetings are kept to a minimum, some teams have no meeting days that are for the most part respected, standup is a blend of video calls and async slack updates. I may have a single day that’s meeting heavy over the course of two quarters. As an IC I get plenty of focus time. Management processes are very pragmatic, and I seldom feel like I’m doing something boring and bureaucratic.
Cons
This segment took a huge hit. The risk one would take is probably at early startup levels. But the pay is top tier, and I don’t think this is much different than the situation a lot of other companies in SV are in. I’ve my teams axed from high valued startups even in boom times.