Pros
Ridecell has some very interesting opportunities. They have fingers in the ridesharing, carsharing and autonomous vehicle pies, so there's a lot of potential long term to work on some interesting problems. Generally speaking they have a culture that is the right mix of playful and business minded. I like my co-workers for the most part. And it is easy to not see the problems in the organization as a result. The company used to be better at encouraging collaboration but mismanagement has destroyed that aspect of the culture.
Cons
The engineering department has been seriously mismanaged. After some much needed management changes, the environment never course corrected. The result is that there was no cultural change and the department was left rudderless for a long time while it retreaded the same broken practices. The current management practices include a command and conquer approach using various levels of micromanagement and a healthy dose of poor communication. Management is more interested in attempting to wear the engineering hat and dictate solutions down to their reports rather than building up and supporting the engineers under them. The result is a pool of talent that is suffering a major brain drain as the all-stars seek jobs elsewhere. Jobs that once held more opportunities for ownership feel more like mechanical/non-creative work. Recently, a re-organization doubled down on this direction. This leaves an impression that the management woes are either not understood at the highest levels or they are being actively endorsed. The remote team has more or less been decimated through refusal to hire more coupled with poor work/communicate strategies. Lip service is paid to how important that aspect of the company culture is with no actions to back it up. I can't foresee remote work being sustained long term. The organization as a whole can't stick to any consistent set of priorities. The results of which leave the engineering department thrashing wildly from project to project while not actually completing any of them to any degree of quality. The result of this is that anything that requires a long term strategy such as tech debt or complex feature creation is nearly impossible in the environment. The whiplash of these changes is frustrating. Anybody who tries to act as a stabilizing force to combat it is frustrated, worn out and inevitably quits. There will be some serious fallout when it becomes evident that this is not sustainable. Tech debt is willingly embraced and it often leads to more problems than it solves. Tech debt is rarely addressed. The product quality is embarrassing and getting worse as the talent declines.