Software Engineer - Software Engineer Anvato Employee Review

Coding skills get sharper. I got frustrated quite a few times, because senior engineers rewrote the code I submitted. I learned a lot about how my code could be better: my half page loops and functions were reduced to two lines of regular expressions and sophisticated closures. Company builds core technology, not another social sharing site or something simple. Big customers, big product, interesting coding challenges. New customers and projects all the time.

Requirements change fast - customers change priorities. After reviews, you may be asked to completely rewrite code. Meetings are short, and you are supposed to understand goals and write your own documents. Engineers are not shielded from customers via project managers. Development speed is way too fast.

Company values coding engineering abilities. Cool projects. Your code matters, really goes into production fast. Senior engineers are very ambitious. Easy to earn respect if your code is good. Compensation directly proportional to coding skills. Core product is very stable, but company is pushing new features fast, so work is exciting, but it is really a lot of coding work.

Schedules are tight. Company seems to value engineering abilities only. If you just know the basics, your work is considered trivial, so you are pushed to learn more by yourself. Managers without deep technical background have difficulties, and they don't survive here. Even customers are quite technical. Priorities shift fast, unless you finish work on hand, too easy to fall behind. My opinion is that pretty much every startup here in the Valley, you have got to work hard. This place is no exception. I don't know about a lot of big companies, but compared to the places I worked before, people come to work here at 9.30 and leave at 6.30 pm at Anvato which is way more reasonable than most. No peer pressure to leave at midnight and hang out with co workers. I however, work some nights to finish my work after dinner, which is ok for me. As soon as you finish, more challenging work is put on your plate. Telecommuting, Work from Home is discouraged here BTW.