Pros
High impact work: Digits features, UX, and the workflow it enables are quite refreshing to a space used to seeing mediocre business financial software. Hearing positive feedback from Digits users and how they see the product will impact their businesses are extremely validating. The high impact we are delivering with every product enhancement is palpable. Top-notch engineering team: The engineering team at Digits are made up of smart and humble people, each has the chops to start their own companies. Yet a lot of us chose Digits because we love working with and learning from one another, and we believe the CEOs can “do it again”. (Jeff and Wayne are serial entrepreneurs with a track record of launching successful products, and taking good care of their people.) Great career-growth opportunities: While I started out doing backend engineering work, over time I have transitioned to Machine Learning engineering. There are regular 1:1 career coaching sessions for everyone to discuss where they’d like to grow into. Also people are very open to bringing you up-to-speed on a new tech stack or knowledge domain. Reasonable work-life balance: The work-life balance is fairly reasonable for a fast-paced startup. About one third of the current employees have young kids, and the leadership are respectful of parents' “hard stops”. Given the company started out as remote-only, we have refined our process of communication over time and a lot of collaboration can still happen asynchronously when I had to sign off at 3PM and return at 8PM.
Kontras
Product priorities can be shifting every few months. It means you may never get to wrap up a project that was 80% done, or you may pick up a project paused a year ago. The mental energy required to let go or pause & go can be taxing.