Awesome structure in place for design. Amazing designers to learn from. Great work/life balance. But slow implementation
Pros
People are super nice across all products and functions, so it's easy to get along with coworkers. Lots of super smart people, yet super humble at the same time. This is my first corporate job, and I had expected it be a lot more political, cut-throat and (unnecessarily) competitive among employees. I was surprised at how awesomely chill people are here. I love the people that I work with! Intuit has a design thinking process called Design For Delight (D4D) that was first established around 2007/08, and they encourage all (non-design) employees to go through this training. Over the years, so many employees have gone through these D4D trainings, and it has created an amazing culture where even non-designers recognize and appreciate the importance of being a customer-backed company. At every all-hands presentations, the leadership team emphasizes the importance of putting the end user's needs first. There's a great emphasis from the executive leadership team that customer benefits are the top priority (vs business benefits), which helps us designers a lot because PMs and PD have to also think of these customer benefits. It was a huge strategic shift made 18 months ago, which has been a big boost for designers. You will love it as a designer, since you have a seat at the table when it comes to influencing the product decisions. If your team isn't yet design driven, you are empowered to create that culture yourself. There's a huge design community -- a lot of amazing talent who bring a great deal of experience, so you have the opportunity for mentorship from these awesome designers! The benefits are great -- ESPP, year-end bonus, 150% 401k match (vests after 2 years of employment), $650 fitness incentive per year, paycheck credits for health, etc. etc. Work-life balance is unbelievably good. Great flexibility -- most people work from home on Fridays.
Cons
The shadow side of having a culture of 'nice' is that when you need to give constructive feedback, it's hard to do so without coming across as super rude. So you'll learn to be super diplomatic at giving your feedback. I wish sometimes we could be a little more direct so people get it that we want them to change/improve the way they're doing things. Also, product development and implementation moves at a snail pace. The leadership team have identified this as an opportunity for improvement. As a designer, if you're someone who wants to ship a lot of designs very quickly, you will be disappointed. I’m not saying that you won’t be doing a lot of awesome designs. It’s just that it takes time for those designs to get to the end user. Also, if you're looking to add a ton of work to your portfolio in a short amount of time, then this is not the place for you. You should go to a start-up or an agency. That said, your portfolio coming out of here may not have a ton of projects (quantity), but they will demonstrate depth of problem solving and execution, that perhaps you can't do at agency level (quality). The decision making process is slow since designers need to align at an ecosystem level -- so prepare to present your work over and over to different levels of leadership. It can be taxing when you have to spend so much time preparing and delivering these presentations. And you have to learn to filter the conflicting feedback you get from each meeting. It can be discouraging at times.
