Pros
Most of the team was really wonderful and inspiring to work with. Folks who truly care about the quality of their work and how they show up for their team members. The data space itself is also a great space to be in. While there is a lot of saturation, data people are community driven, bright, and interesting. Being part of this space through Secoda is a pro, there is a lot to learn that can be transferred to other spaces and companies. Small team means that you get the opportunity to work on and try a lot of different things.
Cons
The CEO is inexperienced at best, ego driven at worst. Decisions for the direction of the product and company often felt rash and poorly thought out. Folks with experience and expertise are pushed out, or laid off. While the team was regularly encouraged to speak up and share their thoughts, doing so in a manner that went against the direction the leadership had decided, put a mark on your back. Suddenly, you're called out for things like the speed at which you respond to the CEO on Slack or the appointment on your calendar, rather than the quality and completion of your work. Not to mention the general operational disorganization and sloppiness. For example, benefits included biweekly team lunches, but the leaders always had to be reminded that the lunches were even on the schedule. Offsites and team activities were planned with little notice. Emails would be forwarded that contained personal and private information. On the product side, there was a ton of institutional knowledge held in the heads of two or three engineers. Little effort had been put into disseminating this knowledge, or refactoring the code base so that the dependency on institutional knowledge wasn't as deep. This had a really negative impact on the culture of the company, and made it difficult to build out sustainable processes to grow into a mature product function. It's disappointing as the potential for the product and company to find success is definitely there. However, it became such a difficult and uninspiring place to work day to day that staying started to impact my mental health and ability to engage meaningfully in the other parts of my life.