Compare Centro vs MediaMath BETA

Pros

Really big, interesting CS problems to work on. No futzing about with weak tea python/nodejs services you would have at your average CRUD SASS company. You have to use serious tools because the scale... is bigtime. Many services have to handle billions of requests/datapoints hourly. Working on these kinds of problems is how you grow as an engineer. The company has comparable scale to FAANG but cant/doesnt pay as well, but they compensate for it by being really chill. No expectation of long hours, no packing stressful amounts of work into sprints. Want to actually use your unlimited PTO? No problem. You have kids and errands? No problem. Very flexible WFH policies. Right now we have summer Friday where every Friday is a half day. Netflix would pay more, but having your life back is priceless.

Cons

10 years of techdebt overhang that slows development down significantly and causes reliability issues/firedrills. Management is serious about addressing it, so there is a silver lining, and you may... get to rebuild some stuff from scratch, which is nice. That said, I don't think a day goes by without some production incident.

Advice to Management

Tech debt is a really big problem. You are working on it, and turning it into a company goal to pay down, which is great, but it is and remains a huge issue. Please retain the enjoyable languages... (Go, Scala, etc.) and relaxed atmosphere. It is why I work here instead of at FAANG.