Patrick ia an evil person - Software Engineer CouchSurfing Employee Review

Couchsurfing has a global team full of smart, genuinely nice people. Everyone I work with has always treated me with respect and kindness. Some of the older reviews were written during a time when the company was changing hands. I’m sorry some people left on bad terms, but those experiences do not reflect the company I've known for many years. This is actually a really cool place to work. Everyone here is genuinely focused on making the platform better. The community is passionate, the mission is unique, and it’s rewarding to know your work directly impacts people around the world.

It’s a small company, so we all wear a lot of hats. That can make things busy at times, and you need to be flexible with changing priorities. It can be stressful if you’re not self-motivated or used to managing multiple responsibilities. If you enjoy variety, being hands-on, and tackling multiple challenges, you will probably thrive here.

I really love the people I work with. The other engineers are extremely talented and I learn from them every single day. The work is challenging and I constantly feel like I'm pushing the limits of my abilities and growing professionally as a result. The swings in the office are a great place to meditate on a hard problem you're chewing on, and if that doesn't do it surely a game of ping pong will. Most people in the office have a standing desk and we also have a 'living room' full of couches, so you never have to sit at the same boring desk day after day. We've started doing Tech Talk Tuesdays twice a month where someone presents a new language/framework/concept during lunch. The food is great. Like most people here, our chef is really, really good at what he does.

I love my work so much, that sometimes its hard to balance out other parts of my life. I find myself staying up through the night and hacking gleefully away on weekends to nail the projects I'm working on. Let me be completely clear: This is NOT because I feel pressure from management to work a lot. Its because the management creates an environment where the engineers are encouraged to build stuff, and to take pride in what you've built. The work-life balance thing is important though, so I guess this is a Con. But I can think of worse problems to have.