Pros

Edge-cutting software and good computers
Flexible work hours if work as student

Cons

One of the worst companies I have worked for. The headquarters are located in Brookings, SD which is a very cold, small college town. The site for the headquarters is probably purposely selected by a big engineering college where no other engineer jobs are available. As a student you are exploited at Daktronics doing work of full-time engineer for $8 per hour without any benefits or bonuses. During school you will be working 20 hours and during summer you will be forced to work 40 hours and will be pushed really hard. 80% of work at Daktronics is done by students. You will be always told how good you work and how they want you but at the same time you will be jokily reminded that you are a student and will continue working as a slave for nothing. There is a lot of red tape at Daktronics. All your activities are constantly monitored to make sure that you work all the time and don't check you email. Your supervisor will be breathing behind you often to make sure you work really hard. Also by some reason you don't like to tell you that you by law allowed to take two 15 minutes paid breaks. If you ask them if you are allowed to take those breaks, they will say that you work on computer in a relaxed environment, so you kind of don't need those.

When you are about to graduate the following will happen: if they don't want you, they will not offer you job saying something like they have no positions available. If you worked really hard reminding often how you love them, they will give you an offer with a laughable salary. Even after working really hard for them for 5 years, to a software engineer, going 5 years to university and studying really hard, they may offer salary lower than a truck driver makes in SD. Many people leave the company as soon as they graduate. There are few who decided to stay and later on, 8 years later, they quit barely making $50K for hard engineering work.

My personal experience with the company wasn't good. When I just started I was really happy to do software engineering and I was getting lots of experience. After a while when you get experience working there is hell. You know you are doing really skilled high paying work but you get paid really really low. You also get really stressed at some times. After the graduation I rejected the offer from Daktronics and got an offer from a different company that I never worked for before. The new company offered me 2.5 more than what Daktronics offered after 5 years of hard work, plus amazing benefits and bonuses. Working here comparing to Daktronics is like in paradise.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to employees.