How's the work life balance in Pinterest?

Yelp / Eng
PjDO07

Go to company page Yelp Eng

PjDO07
Jul 7, 2017 8 Comments

Hope I can get some employee reviews here. How do you like working in Pinterest and how is the overall work life balance? Would be nicer if we can continue conversation in PM or IRL :)

comments

Want to comment? LOG IN or SIGN UP
TOP 8 Comments
  • Pinterest / Product
    sNBV77

    Go to company page Pinterest Product

    sNBV77
    Overall pretty good on work life balance (some even are starting to complain it's coming at the cost of the business)

    I think some rare teams exist that don't have this but overall it's pretty laid back.

    On the work side we have some problems with pretty bad leadership / management but it's slowly (very slowly) getting fixed.

    My only complaint is a company who focuses so heavily on the word "focus" (we have t shirt that says this and signs you can place on desks to tell others you are busy) we sure do have a really hard time doing that.

    Product direction is pretty scary and our CEO seems scared to commit to any single direction or have a clear vision. Which is part of the reason for the last few years we haven't released anything of real value.

    Design and PM side are pretty great environments and have a lot of good mentorship. Engineering leadership and technical leadership is non-existent for the most part.

    Promotion process that heavily favors the wrong things. They want to see more product leadership for promotion (this comes from having a really strong product sense but very weak technical sense)

    Pay is usually pretty good and RSU offers tend to be pretty good. Vacation policy is great.

    Most teams get along pretty well (I think our infra teams have a bit of drama.) Cross team communication is horrible mainly because we don't have a clear product vision at the top so each sub-team sets it's own goals which don't always align with other teams.

    Leadership is open to feedback and I can honestly say I can freely (with in reason) speak my mind and usually see change from it. Most team managers care a lot about team health and moral.

    Lot of upper management who have no fucking clue what they are doing but got in early so they "earned" it at the expense of those beneath them. A lot of them are slowly leaving for other companies though. For a while Pinterest seemed to have a policy of fuck up move up.

    Overall I'm actually pretty happy compared to a few other companies I worked at (sorry this post seems negative but I want to be honest with you)

    Open to any questions you may have
    Jul 7, 2017 2
    • some teams are ultra laid back (aka lazy asses) at the expense of other teams. You can't shout at low performers like people do at uber, and there's pros and cons to it. Overall, agreed what snbv77 says here.
      Jul 7, 2017
  • Very stressful. There is even a post in Pinterest channel that complains work is too stressful.
    Jul 7, 2017 0
  • Facebook
    fgggedsddf

    Go to company page Facebook

    fgggedsddf
    How does Pinterest make money? Is the stock worth anything?
    Jul 7, 2017 1
  • Lawrence will take care of the product innovation issue 😊
    Jul 8, 2017 0
  • There are teams that have it easy and as a result other teams have to pick up the slack so depends on where you land
    Jul 7, 2017 0