Pros
It's a wonderful privilege to work on a product that is good for the world and people love. You feel good knowing that things you've worked on and maintained have led to millions of users and interactions. The company is also ambitious about changing education and cares deeply about it. Pay and benefits are great for a startup and comparable (outside the equity) to big tech. Engineering quality is generally high. You are unblocked from doing your best work, with access to the best hardware and software. Pull Requests are generally well documented and with good tests, which makes it easy to learn from any part of the codebase without playing guessing games. Teammates generally care about both speed of shipping and quality, you can do a lot of good work that touches millions as a result. Systems are well set up so there is less anxiety about fires. Outside of UI, you can just pick up and do work without explicit permission. As an engineer you can push for projects and get to work on it eventually, especially if it is related to what you are already doing. Company is small enough that you can know most people and know how things work. Lunches are friendly. SF Team is fairly diverse for a tech company, with a Singaporean slant. People are kind, smart and take ownership for their work. You can ask for help and teammates will help you without a hint of annoyance. This generosity of knowledge helps learning. Generally everyone cares about users and do their best to make our users happy. Office in SF is gorgeous. You get the best view in SF, of the bay and the Golden gate bridge, and whenever you are stressed you can easily go on a walk to clear your head. The office is also very convenient for cycling adventures before and after work. Generally, Padlet management cares and wants to do well by its employees. Top level decisions are made with good intention. There are many thoughtful decisions such as office location and setup, equity vesting schedules, Michelin benefits. Company metrics are transparent.
Cons
There is unlimited work that can be done once you are familiar. It can be a pro for learning and growth but will be a con without being intentional about boundaries. While the work is clear, tooling and skill development is largely self-directed with some support from the company, so setting goals and reflection is important for growth. Sometimes you put a lot of effort into building things that don't get traction. These often get left to dry or nixed instead of being iterated on to improve usage. It is an expected side effect of experimentation but can feel frustrating when you didn't have much say in why or how things should get built. Timezone differences with engineers in Singapore can slow down progress on shared projects unless you're willing to take calls or respond to reviews at night. I personally do this about once a week and it depends on engineer preference. This is less of a con as the SF team grows. While the equity schedule is generous, without a timeline for liquidity through IPO or share buybacks, long term financial planning is more difficult, especially in the SF office where you need to live in SF or Marin to have a realistic daily commute to the office.