Pros
• Combination of being still small enough/always striving for more makes this company exciting to work because you have an opportunity to make a real difference. Not everything is set in stone so if you work hard it's an excellent environment to learn and grow • Great benefits. This company cares a lot about providing excellent benefits at minimal cost to all of its employees. Paid Parental Leave, something like 18 free therapy sessions per year with Lyra, a lot of people complain that there wasn't 401k match at the time but the Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP) was actually extremely generous and if you were smart enough to enroll in it and use it wisely, it's a guaranteed return faster than 401k and you can go put that money in a retirement fund if that's what you want. • Culture. The mission of sustainability is a decidedly honorable one and a lot of the people who are drawn to a company like this and stick around are ones that buy into the goal of saving the planet who I think tend to skew as more generally cool, kind, smart human beings - The new San Jose office building had a partially subsidized cafeteria before COVID and it was tasty and cheap
Cons
• Work life balance - for so long this company was striving to go public and working so hard to reach that goals, then they did go it and now they're constantly fighting tooth and nail to have good earnings numbers so the stock price goes up. It's always a rush to the finish line at end of quarter to meet goals. Everyone around you has a do-whatever-it-takes mentality and because you don't want to let them down, you do the same. It can really take a toll on people after a while and isn't very sustainable. • Career progression - if you come in at a lower level, you REALLY have to advocate for yourself (and get a manager to then advocate for you) to move up and get salary increases and promotions. If that's not happening, after two years you're probably better off just finding a new job • CleanER, Not clean energy - The marketing can make it seem like Bloom boxes are this perfect, totally clean mean green solution. Yes, they're working on different things like bio gas and carbon capture etc. and yes, there are situations where Bloom's product makes more sense than wind/solar for reasons such as reliability and space constraints, weather... but you're still mostly using natural gas in the US and emitting CO2. I do believe that Bloom has a place in the roadmap to saving the planet, but it's nuanced. Due to the notion that we're running out of time to prevent climate change, I fear policy makers and potential customers will not view Bloom as aggressive enough of a solution.
