Pros
Matter was helpful in cementing what I won't accept in a work environment. I also met a handful of cool people that I'd have enjoyed growing a company with. When the office was open, we'd just moved into a new office space that was dog-friendly with lots of natural light.
Cons
C-level leadership is absolutely unfit for their roles. The CEO is, first and foremost, the product manager and seems uninterested in any other leadership or decision-making facet of the role. This wasn't as big of a deal during my first couple of weeks at the company, but then they laid of the Head of Talent who was acting in as close to an HR capacity as you normally get at a company of this size. The CEO is pretty soft-spoken and has a real nervous energy, but his talk about embracing feedback and past failures was initially appealing. In reality, this is a man who takes feedback VERY poorly and, either consciously or unconsciously, uses the feedback he provides as a form of manipulation and control over the team. The CEO readily admits in his company bio that he once received negative feedback that his facial expressions during meetings made people feel "stupid." I should have taken this as a red flag, but I guess I'd assumed if he was admitting that that was helpful feedback that it was something he'd worked hard to resolve. In fact, he has not. Even when he was providing positive reinforcement or telling developers it was "fine" to amend a timeline, it never felt sincere because his facial expressions and body language indicated otherwise. He'd also leverage the flexibility or investment of "investors" to get developers to revise timelines. For example, one thing he'd always make sure to say what that Matter is super unique because the investors aren't on top of him and he's "trusted" to build the company slowly (aka it's okay that we're pre-product market fit.) But when I discussed that a particular project we were planning might take a couple weeks longer in order to encompass the requested functionality, he says something about how he's totally fine with that but it's the INVESTORS he has to report to who are putting pressure on the timeline. Like... what? It can't be both. So either a) you're deflecting responsibility from yourself for the pressure you're putting on employees or b) the investors are a lot more concerned about the performance of the company than you're letting on. Which is it? Then there's the CTO. This man really enjoys hearing himself talk! What he DOESN'T enjoy so much is doing anything at all to advocate for the engineering team or offering much in the way of guidance on how to succeed at Matter outside of his mantra: this CEO and this company are the best you will ever work for. Like, sir... give me a break. The CTO also CONSTANTLY interrupts people to the point that I'd have to continue talking when he'd attempt to interrupt me just so I could finish a thought. He later told me that I was the only person he'd ever worked with who interrupted him as much as I was. Well, yeah! It's legitimately the only way to get a word in. He later lectured me on how I, as a woman engineer, would be more successful if I "let other people think my ideas were their ideas." This was super precious considering he'd also take things we'd talked about in our 1:1s to other meetings and frame them as his own ideas without referencing that these were ideas we'd discussed! He's also shady as HELL and would talk negatively about other engineers to me in our 1:1s, putting me in an awkward position to advocate for and stick up for his own team members. One day he's singing your praises and the next he's criticizing you ... often for the exact same personality traits or team contributions. Now, if you've gotten this far and you're thinking: That all sounds fine! It's probably not that bad! They've got a promising idea! I don't care about all this kind of stuff! Well... let me also tell you that the development workflow at Matter is nothing short of a nightmare. At the time of my working there, there was very little engineering involvement at ALL during the conception and design phase of projects, and customer research findings end up bloating instead of narrowing the scope of features. Because of that, every feature takes weeks or months to implement. Re-basing long-running feature branches was a constant pain point. Instead of treating any of this like a workflow problem than can/should be improved, I felt like every engineers (especially those who worked on the front end) were left on their own to advocate for themselves to the CEO. I've worked at several companies during my decade in tech, and ya'll know how that goes: it's a mixed bag. But this was BY FAR the most sour experience I've ever had in a professional environment in the shortest period of time. My experience as an outspoken woman pushing leadership to reconsider and think critically about some of our practices definitely made things outsizedly terrible for me. But I don't think anyone else was really any "happier" than I was -- they were perhaps more adapted to the environment or more likely to internalize any issues and problems that they, through personal improvement and "feedback", were responsible for changing. Ummm, no. If everyone at the company is feeling pressured and burned out, the organization bears some responsibility for re-evaluating its approach. Or maybe they DON'T, but if that's the case they should stop saying that they value their employees' mental and physical well-being! I have more examples and more I could say, but hopefully I've gotten my point across. To prospective employees: there are so many promising companies in the world to provide your talents . Places that will treat you and your co-workers with respect as professionals and people... Matter won't make you feel like you matter.