Pros
The compensation was competitive, and I worked with smart, talented people who genuinely cared about building quality products.
Cons
During my whole time there, we had layoffs roughly every 3-6 months, which completely tanked team morale. Each time people were let go, those of us who remained had to absorb their workload on top of our existing roles, creating an unsustainable cycle of burnout. Leadership issues overshadowed any positives about the product. HR would regularly check in with our team about certain problematic managers, promising changes that never materialized. Interestingly, some folks who provided candid feedback during these sessions ended up in the next round of RIFs while the managers stayed on. The product roadmap GTM strategy lacked coherence, with constant pivoting around pricing models, target users, and feature priorities. While iteration is expected at a startup, these changes often felt arbitrary rather than data-driven, making it impossible to build anything with proper architecture or scalability in mind. The best part of working there was definitely my teammates, but you can find great people at many companies. Unfortunately, the great people weren't the ones making decisions. When I was finally let go, despite the financial stress, I felt an immediate sense of relief that was noticeable to people around me. Sometimes you don't realize how bad a situation is until you're out of it.