Vantaggi
There are a lot of positives of working at this company: the shared values among the team, working remotely, the flexible working environment (build your own!), the flexibility in when you work (timezone differences are effectively a non-issue), but most of all it's the incredibly smart and positive people you get to work with every day. Buffer does things their own way. It's unconventional and working hard to do the right thing for their customers and their employees with equal weight. While there's a lot expected out of the team, at the same time the leadership and company genuinely, truly and deeply care about the happiness and fulfillment of each team member. It's an understatement to say this place is special. Further, everything happens completely transparently: revenue, salaries and even email are all transparent at Buffer, which is truly amazing. I can't imagine it any other way now.
Svantaggi
Sometimes marching to the beat of your own drum results in mistakes of inexperience. Poor financial forecasting led to some layoffs, which shook some confidence in the team. Doing things differently also means experimenting - a lot - with different ways of running and managing the company. For some people this can be uncomfortable or feel unstable, which is completely understandable. That comes with the territory. However, everything happens transparently, so very few things happen as a surprise - there is ongoing discourse among the team as transitions happen and experiments are introduced.