good or bad to join right now? have a shot at a nice step up, but cant tell if theyre trending in the right direction
Blows my mind to date that Yelp is alive
What's better?
Google is killing yelps business. Facebook also hurts them
Even I am in the same dilemma. Did you read SQN letter? They just blasted Yelp management for being useless. Stock has underperformed in 12 out of last 18 quarters. Only positive is chance of acquisition. Hoping to get some thoughtful replies here. Btw, TC?
What is Yelp?
Yelp is heavy on cold calls. Says marketing opportunities, but lots of sales and trying to get business to join yelp
“Scamming” and “Conning” are 2 of the core values at Yelp. 💩
Scamming and conning who?
Oh the tie up with GrubHub. Basically cheating merchants.
I think the business will be around for a while. Probably not going to grow at the same pace as other big tech cos and I think ultimately our US only focus means we can only go so far. That's not to say we didn't try but bootstrapping communities in new countries is really really tough. Yelp's management is trying hard to pivot after the SQN letter and early results are encouraging. We're moving away from the outbound / cold calls approach to more of a self service Google approach which should make the business leaner. Other than that, the people who work here are some of the nicest people I've met. I think it could be a good stepping stone for your career - just don't bank on sticking around for 3+ years if you want to see the same comp growth as other companies. (Interestingly, turnover has historically been low in eng: a lot of engineers do stick around for 4+ years, so there's something to be said there.)
Thanks for your detailed response.
Echoing others, our trajectory is meh and product leadership is average at best, but engineering culture is excellent (much better than all of FAANG in my opinion, way less bullshit).
Have you spent time at fang? Why is it better?
Depends on the restaurant. Yelp has a lot of very healthy options, but also plenty of greasier, less healthy options.
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