Pros
- Everyone I've met is really good at their job as an IC (as in top 1% in their field, very strong ICs) - Talented leadership is in place (Grant - Eng, Dan - Design, Jason - Rev, Laura - GTM, Yin - Product) who are all top 1% minds. - Yin as a founder is probably the fastest thinker and smartest person I've met ever. She's very very receptive to feedback, and prefers it directly. I think that's a hard thing for someone to actually have (and she actually does), and a wonderful thing for someone who's working with her to be able to do (instead of having to think politically about how to "couch" feedback). - Default public culture within our remote org helps stem the annoying parts of working remote. That combined with my founder background/I'm not very sensitive to organizational dynamics is why I feel very comfortable writing this.
Cons
- Not a place for mentorship, especially in product (if you're "new" and looking to learn, I wouldn't recommend it). In Product, better for someone who already has experience as a PM and also experience with product strategy (usually in the purview of a Head of Product -- but here it's a larger part of the PM role). What I mean by this is you have to craft the "why"/strategy with leadership and then do the "what"/execution (this is new, previously there was confusion around who exactly is in charge and when things can and should be changed). I came here to help craft strategy as well, but I think there's a lot more onus here on the individual to just come up with something and also a much higher bar for what gets approved. - We have changed "How We Work" quite often, but I also believe I was there for a very turbulent period with this. We've just hired Grant O who is a brilliant mind on this and is getting that structure in place (consistent planning, metrics, org structure, clear responsibilities etc). A lot of growing pains. - Company is basically fully remote (don't know if this is pro or con, but something you should be aware of). For me in product was a slight con for the following reasons: - (1) Won't get to the same level of comradery as in-person companies. (2) Good product strategy doesn't come from someone sitting in a silo'd room, it requires the psychological safety of "we're figuring this out, let's do it together". It's just harder to do that in a remote company. (pro, which I don't care about - you save a ton of time on commute). - Although leadership is talented, we have a high variation in good vs needs improvement managers. I'm running off of the definition of a good manager as providing guidance and letting ICs run within that guidance, but not too prescriptive. This goes hand-in-hand with mentorship (a good manager is in some sense a good mentor). As an org it looks like we're evolving to circumvent this by giving product roles clearer responsibility to set strategy, but during my time here this was particularly frustrating (combined with the above). I'm certain this or any of the cons are things the company doesn't already know. One thing that does continually impress me is that people know the most important problems that face the company and are working to address them (while doing their own workload).