Pros
The company culture focuses on ownership, velocity, and GSD. it's not for everyone, but it's a refreshing change of pace for either (a) experienced technical contributors who learned best practices from top tech companies (e.g. FAANG), but don't want to deal with the layers, politics, and bureaucracy of those companies, or (b) people who are self-starters, highly motivated, and have a lot of intellectual horsepower. People here are hard-working but kind. Perplexity tends to hire a few profiles of people (1) former founders, (2) high-level ICs (equivalent to Facebook L6+) that were former managers, and (3) hard-working and nice younger people (<25 years old). I don't see anyone here whose first job out of college is Perplexity, with the exception of a few geniuses (e.g. 1-2 are high school aged). The founders are generally introverted and are certainly not teddy bears, but have a good sense of humor once you get to know them and are reasonable people. The company used to be pretty introverted (with everyone eating at their desks), but this changed in the last few months with a wave of people who are more extroverted leading a cultural change.
Cons
Our office used to be pretty crowded (we leased a few rooms in a coworking space), but we recently upgraded to a new office. The high trust culture optimizes for people to do what's best for the company and in parallel. The downside is that documentation can be inconsistent and projects can feel a little chaotic. However, the much faster pace of shipping things makes it worth it. Things move fast - decisions that would take 6 months to resolve at Google can be done in 1 week, with similar quality. This is refreshing for the people that self-select to work here but it may be disorienting to people that want more structure. The crazy working hours is exaggerated, but possibly real in the very early days when the company was <15 people. No one is timing your hours or tracking your PTO, and work culture is pretty flexible (e.g., you can work from a different country while traveling, so long as you get your stuff done). This job certainly isn't a 9-5, but it isn't an 80-hour / week situation either unless you want it to be (and enjoy the career advancement that comes with it). I'd estimate my average week to be between 55-65 hours, but I end each week refreshed when I reflect on how much I learned and accomplished. feels much easier than working at a slow-moving giant company (e.g. Google) where months pass and you wonder what customer-facing impact anyone on your team accomplished in that time The expectations are high, but have never felt unreasonable are impossible (e.g. Steve Jobs). However, a few people have not been able to meet the expectations and they are fired quickly (which is a green flag for me). This means you work in a culture where people are generally on top of their stuff, and there's no dead weight. The bottom line is: If you're a strong contributor who wants to fly, unencumbered by bureaucracy, consider applying to Perplexity. Hope that helps!