Pros
- Some great coworkers who are genuine, intelligent, and hardworking. - As another reviewer noted, sandwiches once a week. - The founder and CEO's dog in the office. - Close walking distance to the F train stop, though before I left the company, there were rumblings that the company would be moving to midtown Manhattan. If that's true, this "pro" is a moot point.
Cons
- No professional development. The general atmosphere is that most non-executives are replaceable, yet the de facto expectation is that you should work as if you're compensated comparable to executive leadership and/or are working around the clock to save the world from climate change. Compared to other companies I worked at, there's significant turnover at First Street for the aforementioned reasons, and probably many more. A C-level executive left a vague review here on Glassdoor, but on his own team, while I was there, several people left with less than a seven month tenure at the company and under very ambiguous circumstances. It's difficult to address what would be an HR complaint at many other companies because there was no designated HR person, not even a consultant. Leadership had a member of leadership act as HR, and as you can imagine, that's a conflict of interest. - Disingenuous product with pushy and clever marketing. Possibly every company has a continuum of disingenuousness with their products while they're continuously iterating. However, if poked and prodded by residential homeowners whose property values are mostly negatively, and possibly wrongly, impacted by ratings that cannot be petitioned, Risk Factor's ratings would be exposed for what they are. I'll let you do the math on that one. First Street is taking generalizations and applying them to individual home properties to tap into a climate change ratings marketplace. Why? Regardless of what the intention or business plan is, the reality is that they can make money from insurance companies, real estate portals, and the government. Middle-class individual homeowners and homebuyers probably won't buy multiple properties, so there's little reason to buy individual property reports or subscriptions. Who is doing the fact checking? Where is the data validation? Why can't people have their property scores changed if the scientific model's findings are wrong? This lack of transparency is also reflected in "trivial" tactics such as many staff members leaving the few positive reviews found for Risk Factor and First Street. First Street has since removed non-leadership employees from their "Teams" section on their site. However, you can still go to LinkedIn to match names of employees, past and present, against many of the positive Google reviews for Risk Factor and First Street. Also, as of February 2024, for First Street job postings for the NYC metropolitan area, the company doesn't post salary range, even though it's been mandated by NY state law since September 2023 as long as you have more than 4 employees. You can guess why leadership makes that choice. - Leadership that sets the tone for the company with their actions, rather than words. Vibe is tech bro meets finance bro meets the passive aggressive hipster keyboard warriors you find all over coffee shops in Seattle and Brooklyn. They like to talk about liberal causes to seem sophisticated, but unconsciously peg people who don't think or act exactly like them as beneath them. Advice to potential employees: If you need a paycheck, accept this job offer, stick around for a few months while looking for a job elsewhere. You can always schedule interviews on WFH Tuesdays and Fridays. Eat the breakfast sandwiches so at least you can save money on breakfast.