More than pushing code - Principal Software Engineer Parabol Employee Review

5.0
Aug 18, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- The CEO spent half his career writing code. IYKYK - Pay is based on position, not location - Open-source - Company is built in the open, has published weekly progress for 6 years - Tech stack: K8s, Typescript, NodeJS, GraphQL, React - Engineers are brought in early to the design process, customer interviews, etc. - No offices, no fear of having to go back to the office - The product is for engineering teams, by engineering teams. It's fun to actually use the tools we build - Genuinely nice, friendly people

Cons

- The hiring process is... different. The technical interview is basically a take-home to solve a bug in a popular open-source repository. There is a "culture interview" that focuses on empathy & doesn't have a technical aspect. The last step involves pushing a new feature to the actual codebase. It takes a couple days, but at least it's paid. - It doesn't feel like it moves as fast as other hot startups. I sometimes miss the move-as-fast-as-you-can mentality and occasional all-nighters. - Short on engineers. Lots of cool designs never get built because there aren't enough engineers to build the features.

Explore other reviews about Parabol

5.0
Sep 1, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- everything open source === awesome sauce - CEO is very technical - modern and clean codebase - high coding quality standards - inspiring and kind coworkers - incredible high trust in senior and executive leadership - excellent health insurance for US employees

Cons

- DE&I could be improved, but we're working on it - no 401K or home office stipend etc., mostly bc we're young and hyper focused on hiring now - the pace can sometimes feel slow compared to a startup that has their blinders on hockey-stick growth above all else

2
5.0
Apr 13, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Parabol believes people are able to do their best work when the work feels meaningful to every teammate. The product Parabol makes aspires to help people feel connected to each other and help teams do their best work. Because everybody at Parabol uses Parabol to do their job, it is easy to feel connected to why Parabol exists as a company. Parabol is a values-driven company: Parabol's hiring process is designed to find folks with similar values, even if folks have differing backgrounds or identities. Hiring colleagues who value empathy, experimentation, and transparency helps Parabol's employees build trust and communicate with one another. Parabol is an inclusive, remote-first company. There is no central office. People who work at Parabol include busy parents, folks with eldercare responsibilities, or value personal flexibility, time freedom, and deep work. Parabol tries to minimize mandatory meetings. Parabol defaults to doing work asynchronously, but we're not shy to "upgrade the bandwidth" and collaborate with one another realtime. People work with a high degree of autonomy, and a process exists on every team for suggesting and implementing changes to the way anything on the team or more broadly within the company.

Cons

Parabol is a young, growing company. As of this writing (2021), Parabol is fewer than 6 years old. It's dynamic and evolving and each person who Parabol hires has an impact on its culture. As the rate of evolution at Parabol is high, sometimes there isn't "a way" to do something yet. Successful employees must be comfortable with some ambiguity—or better—helping to experiment, find, and write down how things get done.

2
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