Pros
* Great people. For real. The people who work here are all awesome. Even when you have disagreements with people over designs/patterns it's all handled really well because the people in the tech department are just good people. * Fairly interesting tech stack...this kind of depends on what part of the product you work in, but there is a modest modernization effort that is taking place sometimes(more on this in cons). * Pay was competitive. * You get to feel good about what you're working on. * Flexible hybrid/WFH policy.
Cons
* While the company does want to modernize the platform the software is built on, they're not always really willing to take the time to do that correctly. Lots of lip service here in the all hands meetings, but when push comes to shove this is not actually a priority. * Management positions/promotions seem to be solely favorite based. Merit and desire for the position seem to matter very little. This is mostly fine because the people are such a plus here, but it does sometimes end up with people in management positions that they are not particularly qualified to be in. * Not a ton of career direction available at the more senior levels of development. They're somewhat willing to let you blaze your own trail to a new position if you're interested in that, but there's not really a like "progression" set out for you. Nor are there many devs with +7 years of experience there who can help guide you. * Tech decision making is shaky. I've got 10 years experience and there was only 1 dev here with more. When me and her would push for things as best/modern practice it was often ignored with a "why can't we do it the way we've always done it" - even though the way they've always done it was the source of several of their current predicaments from a tech/scaling perspective. * PTO and benefits are kinda bad honestly. Time off carries over in weird ways, and it's easy to lose stored PTO. You also don't get a ton of PTO either. The health insurance is ok but somewhat expensive. * Grinding over 40 hour weeks is definitely encouraged here. It's not required, but if you're not willing to be a "rise and grind" kind of person you will be limited in what is available to you. These last few cons are more recent and definitely impacted my decision to leave, but I'm not sure how permanent they will be: * Instability/Inconsistent messaging from the top. Several people were laid off during a recent re-org, but this re-org wasn't really ever announced and just kinda started chopping people left & right w/o much explanation. The tech team was rarely affected but it was weird to come in on a Monday and be like "Ok who's not here this week". * I was initially encouraged to speak up when I felt a design pattern was wrong or if I felt like we were doing something that would create a mountain of tech debt later...This shifted early in 2024 and those conversations started happening less. Even to the point of being asked to "just say yes" even if I thought something wasn't possible in a given timeline.