Pros
This is a small but incredibly smart and motivated team. Being a small startup, most people end up wearing different hats as necessary, and the the fact that everyone here is a believer in the company mission helps solidify that effort. Because the company is still relatively small, and exploring various ways to grow, self-initiative is an asset. If you have a good idea, and a will to make it happen, there’s probably a way to see it through. To that end, the team feels very organically structured – there are of course management roles, but everyone in the company has pretty good visibility of what our high level and more immediate goals are, and that allows people to self organize projects much more fluidly.
During my time here, I’ve had the ability to grow tremendously, and owe a lot of that to the culture here. There is an informal emphasis on learning and pushing yourself further and with the reasonable limitations of a small team, there is support for professional development and skill advancement. People here work hard because they are motivated and engaged, but not to the point of exhaustion. This is another sign of the somewhat Laissez-faire management, where team members are expected to be responsible for getting their work done, and not for keeping unreasonable hours just for the sake of staying late. This company is the first I’ve worked at that feels like it has a ingrained culture of good work-life balance, and everyone seems better off for it.
There are other startups in SF that have adjustable standing desks. But throw in morning physical challenges (think: optional playfully competitive 2-min morning warm-ups), a kitchen full of healthy (but tasty) snacks and lunch foods, some balance boards and yoga balls scattered throughout, and you pretty quickly realize that pretty much everyone on the team takes the mission of leading healthier lives to heart. There are no enclaves of dogmatic diets or exercise cultures, just a collection of people all interested in working to improve their own health in addition to the health of others.
Cons
While one of the upsides to working at a small company is that there is a lot of room for autonomy and taking on different tasks, I do sometimes miss some of the benefits afforded by a larger team (read: team resources and ability, not compensation). The idea is to keep growing until we get there though!