Pros
I worked as an Engineer at Everlywell for more than 3.5 years and overall I have really enjoyed my time there. I've been able to see the company truly grow over that period and one of the coolest things that I can say about the company is how transparent it has always been. Through that transparency, whether it be company all-hands meetings, reports, or general announcements in communications, you are highly exposed to how the business as a whole operates, the relevant KPIs and metrics across departments, and the key strategies to consistently achieve super aggressive goals. Seeing all of these things, at that level detail, get planned, executed, and reported on a regular basis is really educational regardless of what department you are even working in.
From what I have experienced, having this level of understanding of the business allows teams to practice a much higher degree of autonomy when it comes to delivering work. Teams know what data is relevant to delivering success and are then encouraged to figure out how to best achieve that...directives for features are not really just given to you from the top-down, it's very much driven by the team and makes it much more rewarding and interesting. Teams are also free to use whatever methodology they see appropriate for how they work. If it doesn’t work for your team, you have the power to change it with your team and that's pretty cool.
Not everything has been a smooth ride though, there have been a few bumps along the road, but bumps are unavoidable and I will say that every step of the way, they are asking you "What can we do better? What's working? What isn't working" and then they actually take action on the results of those answers. People will listen and there are many ways to have your voice heard in this organization: anonymous + public Q&A, 1+1's, surveys, polls. There is a lot of input to give if you have it.
The tech stack is modern and pretty fun to work with. There is an effective CI/CD pipeline that generally makes deploys and preview environments very simple…makes the process of working on a ticket, spinning up a preview environment, QA’ing, and then deploying to production super easy. They use/implement feature flags, AB testing, a Design Language System, interaction metrics, automated testing, observability, and real user monitoring. Lots of opportunities to get hands-on experience with many relevant technologies and paradigms.
I think Everlywell tries hard to keep you engaged with the organization and with the team, especially throughout the pandemic. Between the DEI ERG and the Product + Engineering Culture Committee, there are a lot of valuable activities and programming to take in, if you want to attend. I also appreciate that the company does not ignore the events of the world and acknowledges insane things that are happening. It's nice to be able to feel like a bunch of humans together. Even while being fully remote, I feel like I was able to stay engaged and feel like part of a team, in a non-corny or annoying type of way.
Overall, Everlywell is a great place to be if you want to work with really cool people, learn a lot, and have opportunities to make a big impact.
Other Pros:
* Unlimited PTO (never had an issue getting time off)
* company match for charitable donations
* free tests
* educational stipend
* full time remote
Cons
There can be a lot of meetings, but you are also encouraged (by the CEO) to decline meetings that have no agenda.
There is a big emphasis on OKR’s and goal setting, which is a Pro and helpful from the perspective of career growth within the company, but it also makes for quite a bit of extra administration work. It can be hard to make time to focus on those things sometimes.
From my experience at Everlywell, it has always been a bit challenging to minimize context switching. Things move fast and it feels like you do get pulled in a few different directions from time to time. This can make it hard to focus sometimes.
It is always heavily encouraged to attend meetings with your camera on...that can be bleh at times depending on what type of person you are, but isn't really a huge deal.
Teams tend to change frequently (or have in the past), so it can be challenging to get past the forming stage of a team to the point where you really hit your stride and become predictable...which can be frustrating. This is kind of just a symptom of fast growth though...new teams need to come from somewhere I suppose.
There is a lot going on and can feel a bit overwhelming to keep up with at times - There is a lot of interesting work happening so it can definitely feel like a balancing act...but I feel like I have seen this skewing in a more focused direction between teams over the last year(s) which has been cool to see.
I feel like most of my cons are probably common to any company at this stage though. It's hard to grow and deal with changes...I think Everlywell stands out in how they really try to make these unavoidable speed bumps as smooth as possible.
