Pros
I could easily write an extremely long list of what makes me so happy to work at Braintree, but in the interest of your time, here are the highlights:
- The people - I really enjoy the company of my colleagues - like, each and every one of them is a great person and fun to be around.
- Hiring - Braintree's interviews are unlike normal tech interviews. Much more emphasis is put on communication skills and personal integrity. Since we pair on interviews, devs start interviewing candidates soon after they start. (To give you an example, I interviewed my first candidate a month after I started at Braintree).
- Pairing - We pair around 80-90% of the time, and pairs switch fairly often. Because of this, I have improved far more as a developer in the months I've been here than in any other role.
- Importance - The code I write is responsible for handling billions of dollars.
- Polyglot culture - Sharing context is encouraged. It's not unusual for an iOS dev to be working on the Python client library.
- Open dev day - Like 20% time, but for the whole day every other Friday. Great for working on open source.
Cons
- Braintree doesn't prioritize open source work as highly as one might want - priority is given to building new features (although this is changing).
- (At least in the Bay Area) Stripe dominates PR and developer mindshare in the payments space, not as many people know of Braintree.
