Philo Reviews

Pros

- Great culture and leadership. Emphatic management that offers good benefits and working conditions. - Smart, humble & collaborative people in every department. Great builders and thinkers. Excited about (effective) innovation. - Good product (& healthy business) in a tough industry. - Good opportunities for personal development and company growth.

Cons

Philo does does a lot with a little. The headcount difference between world-renowned streaming services (& their financial backing) and Philo is significant, and this translates into challenges keeping up with the latest trends (and/or fads). (And the streaming industry is always been evolving very fast!) I don't mind this position, as it requires us to be thoughtful to keep the business healthy and the people happy, and we seem to be quite successful at this. That being said, I'm sure some people could experience this as a negative as their ideas and ambitions might outpace what is realistically possible. Another manifestation of this is that finding the trade-off between code quality and new feature development can be tough. However: 1/ I might be wrong, as I'm not active as an engineer at Philo; 2/ I feel that we are getting better at this, and that we're taking the right steps to improve this (and hiring the right profiles for it); 3/ I have yet to find a tech company that was truly happy with their tech stack.

Pros

Philo gives you a lot of autonomy on how you execute work, and offers opportunities for you to explore interests outside of your day-to-day duties

Cons

Philo gives you a lot of autonomy, this can sometimes feel like a lack of support if you need more hands-on management

Pros

-Smart and hard-working staff who have a shared passion for creating a great and affordable live-TV streaming service option for the general public. -Established enough to have mentorship and structure in work, lean enough to make highly-visible and impactful work. -Culture that prioritizes kindness, collaboration, transparency, and humility. -Flexible work structure; offers onsite, hybrid, and fully remote. -Diverse and inclusive group of folks.

Cons

-A couple of strong personalities. -As the case with startups, still building out systems and processes.

Pros

Great culture, smart people, strong product, interesting work, lots of exposure to different areas of business

Cons

Structural things are lacking, some executives' opinions are holding the company back (e.g. lack of titles)

Pros

The company makes a great effort to make sure employees are taken care of. Good benefits.

Cons

Engineers seem to be the VIPs when it takes a village to run a ship.

Pros

it feels good to work for a company that cares deeply about it's employees.

Cons

The culture is highly collaborative, that's a good thing, but it doesn't suit everyones work style.

Pros

-Friendly company culture -Employees are not siloed but get to work cross-functionally -Room to grow and learn, employee-centric work policies -Huge growth potential

Cons

-No 401K matching at this time -Typical growing pains, but overall pretty good

Pros

A lot of flexibility to pursue ideas or projects outside of your official job descriptions, collaborative culture, great benefits. Perfect for someone who likes to have a say in what they work on and fully own the end result.

Cons

No 401k matching, unlimited PTO often leads to pressure to not take PTO or stay available while on vacation. Not a great place to work if you prefer managers to consistently assign you work-- requires a lot of independence.

Pros

Open environment being able to speak with anyone about anything.

Cons

There are no cons for me.

Pros

Philo is a wonderful place to work. The culture is very friendly and inclusive. Currently a good size: not so big as to be impersonal, but not so small as to require crazy hours or wearing too many hats. Hours are flexible and rational, and vacation is encouraged (and exemplified by leadership). Benefits are decent for a company of the size/history/funding. The leadership is technical, and are very open and accessible. The building's nice, and centrally-located in SoMa. The engineering culture specifically is great. Meetings and unneeded process are kept to a minimum; what do exist for those are constantly iterated on to find what works and what doesn't. There's a big focus on learning and sharing knowledge, both within teams and throughout the department. The org structure is mostly flat, with ideas and technical competency trumping hierarchy and seniority. We strike a good balance between shipping code and minimizing technical debt — and all team members ship code, regardless of title. We work with cutting-edge technologies where they make sense, but avoid dogma on either side of that debate. Engineers aren't silo'd into working on one specific thing, but are free to work on what they find interesting. Discussions and debate are encouraged, with an eye toward making sure even the quieter team members have their say. Recruiting is a department-wide concern, and we're prioritizing diversity in hiring.

Cons

Nit picking, really: 401k matching would be nice, and will likely happen in a future stage of the company.