Vantaggi
The leadership are extremely competent and supportive. They provide space for staff to grow and contribute in new ways. While they bring lots of their own experience, they are still open to new ideas and other viewpoints. There is a lovely balance between the positive parts of start-up culture (team spirit, everyone has a voice, agility) and a mature established company (security, benefits package, work life balance, the ability for the company to grow and do stuff that costs). There are legacy engineering challenges (as with any company more than a couple of years old), but there is a clear plan in place to address them which is very refreshing and satisfying. Carrying legacy code is painful, fixing and replacing it can be cathartic and even fun! The new architecture is great - lots of interesting distributed systems challenges to get your teeth into and plenty of modern tooling to reduce friction. There is plenty of opportunity to learn and grow. The company is growing fast as well, so career opportunities are plentiful. I know of at least one colleague who has completely changed career direction while working at Expend which is very cool. I have also seen how patient and supportive Expend leadership are when someone is struggling. They clearly want people to thrive, and are prepared to be extremely flexible to make that possible. Fully remote (apart from one optional office day in London each month) which of course helps greatly with work life balance and gives me much valued time with my family.
Svantaggi
The only one I can think of right now is that I miss working in an office sometimes. I'm very much a people person, and I loved those little interactions you have throughout the day - sharing a joke or helping each other out with problems when they crop up. That said I think we're getting pretty good at working in this way since the pandemic, and Expend does it well. I don't I miss the office life enough to go back to commuting an hour each day and losing that time with family.