Pros
- People: Everyone at Amplify is super chill and friendly. People are usually pretty flexible and accommodating, and there are folks from all walks of life. Everyone is very social and accepting, and they always do surprise birthday cakes and parties for big life events. - Unlimited PTO is a huge improvement over the nickel-and-diming of PTO from my previous job. Groups work in two-week sprints (scrum) typically, and so long as you give notice, you can usually take some time off without issue. I've seen people from other countries use their PTO and remote working options combined to go home for a month without issue, so long as you're getting your work done. - Free coffee and other drinks (soda, flavored seltzer), daily snacks, and occasional lunches during events. Cold brew on-tap during the summer is fantastic. Once a month they host a Waffle Wednesday. - Great location for places to eat. DUMBO is a huge tourist location, and they have some amazing food options and fantastically scenic places to eat. - The company appears to be doing well, and is growing. They had some difficulties in 2015, as I understand it, but have since come back.
Cons
- Management can be fairly inconsistent, depending on your team. I was on a fairly stable team for over a year, then got shuffled around with the product I was working on to 2 or 3 other teams. Additionally, my official manager kept changing, and was practically never ON my team, leading to a lot of my work assessment being done by word of mouth. On my last team at the company, half the people ended up leaving within the first half-year, and Amplify did not seem prepared to actually keep track of the remainder, leading to inconsistent assessments of my work and overall progress. It might be anecdotal, but I felt slightly abandoned or forgotten about. - Pay in my position was less than that of similar companies in NYC, and did not grow at a reasonable rate during my time there. With the inconsistent management mentioned above, I was not encouraged or offered the ability to improve my position or job title during my time there, and as a result did not get the recognition (both praise and money-wise) that someone with my length of tenure would typically get. Some people fared better than me, but I got the sense that a decent amount did worse. - A reliance on a Ukraine-based consulting company for additional team members has lead to some difficulties with efficiency and communication. The time difference means that direct collaboration needs to be done in the morning, and if they or you need help during off hours, you might have to wait until the next day. Additionally, for every positive listed above, there are caveats: - The people tend to be nice, but I personally felt a slight difficulty in finding my group. The interns are always very tight-nit and fun, around the 20-year-old mark and often from the same school, and then a lot of the rest of the company tended to be people in their mid-to-late 30s or older. Everyone would have great conversations on Slack and at lunch, and everyone is very fun in general, but at the end of the day I had to decide between socializing with the young college kids or the mostly-married older folks. For people that fit one of these two molds or that have no interest socializing outside of work this is unlikely to be an issue, but for me it was a bit tricky. - The software side of the Amplify has diverse people from all walks of life, and everyone in NYC is completely accepting of whatever life you may lead, but the company itself has only just begun having explicit conversations about diversity, and other factions of the company seem more samey than software. - Free coffee and daily snacks are nice, but the snacks go out and disappear within about half an hour every day, and you will be hard pressed to get lunch in DUMBO without spending at least $10. Obviously not every company can feed their employees every meal, but it's worth noting that you will have to feed yourself.
