Pros
High levels of energy and enthusiasm permeate the day to day working environment at Mango. Talented, dedicated, and hardworking people can be found in many areas of the company, and this creates a contagious desire to always improve on the products and services offered here. Mango’s recruiting process has come a long way in the past few years, and is now excellent at identifying rockstar-level candidates that bring fresh talent into all areas of the company. People at Mango truly believe in the mission of enriching lives with language and culture, and this passion is palpable. They are inspired by great conversations with customers, excited when a new feature or product alleviates a user’s pain point, and invigorated by the many signs indicating that the company is on the right track. Mango bravely takes on the challenge of breaking into new markets and learning about the ever changing needs of our users because as a whole, the company believes in the importance of bringing accessible language education to everyone, not only in this country but in the entire world. This shared passion unites Mango’s teams and continually motivates them to keep up the work of doing what it takes to provide equitable language learning resources for all. It’s what makes it a joy to come to work each day and tackle the challenges the market throws at us. Perks include free language learning (both in the app and through live online classes with qualified, committed teachers), unlimited PTO (though the reality is that many employees don’t take enough of it), and of course the usual 401K, health insurance, etc.
Cons
Sometimes the company still behaves like it did in its startup days, which means that many areas of business aren’t regulated by processes yet, that people often have to step outside of their designated roles to complete unrelated tasks (often in addition to their existing full-time workload), that the product development pipeline is riddled with distractions and reactive risk mitigation tasks, and that communication patterns haven’t grown enough to comfortably provide the level of clarity that a company of this size needs. Too much of the company’s success depends on the right people doing the right thing because they care or feel responsible (rather than business operations, training, and processes triggering the right steps and actions that lead to success), and it’s always obvious when that doesn’t happen. Core values are portrayed as the most important guiding principles that should dictate hiring, firing, and everything in between. However, the reality is that the core values are rarely mentioned outside of quarterly company meetings, and not much is done to ensure that people - regardless of where they are in the company hierarchy - actually act in alignment with the core values or enforce any sort of consequence when they don’t.