Pros
New office space Responsibility and ownership can grow quickly Other departments generally willing to help and collaborate Occasional free team happy hours Your opinion is valued most of the time Leadership is understanding of morning delays without reprimand No excuses culture - works for some, not for others Ambition is generally rewarded Director level and above at the company is very stable Professional independence Product SVP cares about you while you are on his team Some product leadership possesses a wealth of experience Fintech is growing and innovative You work hard, but generally don't work after 6PM Relaxed atmosphere Generous PTO
Kontras
401k match doesn't vest for two years. Extremely high turnover within the product team. Within a one year period, five team members left within a nine person team. The highest tenured person on the team was eleven months. Some product leadership lacks product experience, including not having experience founding or launching a product. Some product leadership will blame their employees for project errors or failure, including in front of the CEO and external clients. There is little long term (2+ years) road map planning, which leaves little room for the product team to be innovative and creative in finding new product market fits. Your professional life will revolve around a twelve month cycle and making the plan so that bonus requirements are met for leadership. This is an agile shop, but some leadership is unfamiliar with agile development which causes stress. Adversarial relationships between certain departments is the norm. You will spend time making review decks, taking time away from building products and features. While you are a product manager, you will spend large amounts of time on financial analysis, invoice tracking, marketing, and operations projects in an effort to meet the plan. You will need to navigate strong egos. The product team is compensated at a lower tier than employees across other departments at the lower levels (senior manager and below), per other department employees. Other departments will overreach into product responsibilities. Very competitive fintech market You will have meetings cancelled without notice CYA culture
