Pros
I feel that the mission, culture, ability to support my quality of life and desire to get things done are all areas that CarGurus meets beyond expectations. One area where perhaps being jaded by prior experiences I was not expecting to be so happy about was the general quality of the people I interact with every day. We all arrive to work everyday burdened with the worries and frustrations that sometimes affect our lives, but in the short time I have been there the quality of my interactions with all my colleagues has been amazing. I work with talented, intelligent, polite, collaborative and positive people. My interactions have never had a tone of negativity or conflict. Any organization has areas where pressure to deliver and perform cause emotional load, but people seem open to taking opinion, and offering different and sometimes opposing views in a honest and objective way. I always feel I can voice an opinion, and enjoy that same activity from my peers. In my role within the Engineering organization I have access to modern tools and am constantly asked for ways to learn and leverage more of them, which is something that was important to me in a new position. The current state of CarGurus is past crazy startup and well before overly played out, overly middle management ridden destroyer of hope organization. I look forward to coming into work.
Cons
CarGurus is pretty open about their expectations that “we feel people do their best work in the office”. Coming from a environment with a really relaxed office presence policy I was fearful this would be difficult. The fact that there is no limit on reasonable personal or sick time covers the worries about making appointments or taking care of things that come up helps. You are expected to log this time, but it does not count against accrued PTO. I thought this would be more of a “Con” than so far I have found it to be. Three weeks of vacation felt low, but that is non inclusive of 11 holidays. Being in Cambridge the commute can be a bit of a nuisance, but it’s location also means there are more options to commute, and in addition to the normal public transport subsidies CarGurus will alternatively cover a large majority of parking. The parking is in the Cambridgeside Galleria which for me turns out to be a pro when I need to pick up something needed on my way home. I thought the daily free catered lunch was a going to be a bit of a gimmick along with the free snacks, fruit, yogurt, kegs, cold brew, video game area, but not having the daily worry about what to do for lunch is actually nice, and I end up with more money in my wallet at the end of the week. If I want a change there are tons of other options within throwing distance anyways.
