Growing pains aren't an excuse for disorganized workplace
Pros
-There are a lot of great people and most teams really enjoy working with each other when they are focused on a project and left alone by management. -Office environment is fun and feels like a start up, free food, drinks, games, happy hours in office, etc. -They operate in a trendy area of ecommerce and have a great mission, so the experience is great for resume.
Cons
-The hiring process is terrible. HR is a joke and completely useless, both for prospective employees and current employees so you need to be strong willed and independent because you won't get much assistance if any with any issues you experience. -While individual teams are strong, inter-team and inter-departmental collaboration is often painful, the engineering managers have big egos and don't actively get involved to foster collaboration or resolve problems, leading to many engineers wasting time on nonsense tasks to please management. -Management dysfunction leads to projects that spin endlessly and constantly change direction. Anything that requires significant infrastructure or architectural changes is nearly impossible to accomplish due to conflicts between teams and projects that leadership can't resolve. -Strong engineers often have to long work hours or have to work at home at night to get 'heads down' time to focus on work, makes work/life balance difficult, which is why they put so much into making the office a fun environment. It's cool if that's your thing, but it's just because they want you to stay there all the time. -The hiring standards have deteriorated over time, and poor performers are being brought in because leadership can't attract strong talent - strong engineers see the dysfunction and often run away after first interview. -There is very little room for growth in terms of promotions and developing a career path.
