Better than most companies, but has serious communication and accountability problems
Pros
Beautiful HQ office (global pandemic notwithstanding), well-loved useful product, work/life balance is usually supported, strong culture of acceptance and inclusion (by a majority of ICs, at least), perks on par with comparable companies, codebase is receiving much-needed rewrites, CEO has a decent moral compass
Cons
The problem with a startup based on transparency that operates within its own “searchable log of all communication and knowledge” is that eventually, if successful, it grows up to be an enterprise company that has to admit that not everything should be found if searched for. This growth without corporate maturation has resulted in a massive communication and expectation rift, both between ICs and management as well as cross-functionally, and it fuels everything from the constructive feedback problem (everyone's afraid to give it for fear of seeming “not nice") to the product direction problem (roadmaps are slapped together and then changed if the OKRs they support start looking bad) to the reliability problem (tests are flaky and QA is understaffed) to the management problem (lots of middle managers are ineffective but aren’t supported or held accountable - until last year upwards 360 feedback cycles for management had been removed completely for over a year) to the leveling problem (many employees are brought in under-leveled, leading to a burst of work to be promoted and creating resentment and demoralization) to the hiring problem (C-suite, almost all recently and externally sourced to soothe stockholders, won’t concede outright that they want shiny FAANG resumes and not culture fit i.e. “Slackiness” anymore).
