Pros
Engineering team has/had some all-stars in the tech community. The overall concept of their product is strong and captivates talent as well as customers. Benchmark managed to hire a diverse pool of talent in terms of LGBTQ+ and minorities. Location in the Ravenswood neighborhood is a nice change of pace from having to cram onto CTA into the Loop. Work-life balance was pretty good, but I came from a background in FinTech, so take that as you will.
Cons
The product is/was ill-defined and poorly executed due to bad business decisions. Contracting out the design and the execution lead to a death by 1000 cuts situation. It was difficult to "own" an area and see it through to its release due to the incredible amount of politics that existed for such a small company. Leadership came down hard on engineering to release a product that was not well-defined, despite feedback from engineering that requirements were not solid. A culture of distrust formed between engineering and leadership that created a really toxic environment as an engineer. The lack of communication between leadership and management really has caused a rift. No weekly company-wide status updates means that each team works in a silo, priorities are not shared across the organization, and ultimately the customer suffers. I felt that I had to step away after watching the same mistakes be made over and over again and my workload’s prioritization keep changing. I wasn’t happy with my output due to context as a result of poor management from the top down. If you do take a position with this company, please read the fine print, especially around 401k employer contributions and matching. It is not intuitive!
