Databricks after Google and Facebook: How do they stack up for an employee?

A comparison of working at these places, with some caveats and a general note.

I’ve worked at Google (Mountain View and Pittsburgh), Facebook, IBM TJ Watson Research Center, and Xerox PARC. But I’ve enjoyed my day-to-day the most at Databricks, a late-stage startup where I work and just finished exactly 5 months today. This might be surprising to those who consider these other companies their ‘dream companies’. So I’ve written a short note describing the factors that make me feel this way. But first, a bit of caveat.

A bit of caveat

This isn’t a scientific comparison by any means. It’s one person’s opinion across companies where the role/seniority weren’t the same, and the times of employment were also different. For example, I only worked as a junior engineer at Google, and only ran a large team (>200) at Facebook. Also, Google today is quite different a company compared to what it was in 2010. So these types of notes are anecdotal. Having said that, there are company-specific cultural idiosyncrasies that are consistent over time and across roles (e.g. the feelin…