Front

Pros

I've been at Front for a little while now and it's been on the whole a remarkably positive experience with a really great group of talented, kind people. In terms of engineering & product, there's a strong sensibility here of wanting to make tools that work for people instead of expecting everyone to adapt to your "one true way" of modelling the world (*cough* facebook *cough*), and I think the product has the potential to genuinely empower people, especially in community organizing & communication-based work.

While it's not something you have to do all of the time, almost everyone on the engineering team spends at least some time talking directly with customers, which is a really helpful practice and keeps you grounded in what effect your work is actually having on people.

There's a healthy balance here between "Make the office a good place that people want to be in" and "Accept that people have lives outside of work". I get to both be friends with the people I work with and also keep healthy boundaries between my work and personal life. The fact that Front had an HR department from very early on is a positive sign to me.

Advice to Management

It's going to be tough keeping closeness among the teams and maintaining ways for folks to self-organize. Do your best to continue to encourage a bottom-up approach with space for ideas from more junior employees & keeping people talking across teams.