Coraid – “Fast-paced start-up engineering environment using Agile methodologies to design AoE data storage solutions.”

Pros

The engineering group is dedicated, but also has fun. Good communication. Not a quiet place. Engineers are talking to each other, while on the other side of the room Sales are talking to customers on the phone. We hear sales being made in real-time. Very exciting! This also makes for immediate feedback as to which features need to be prioritized.

No politics here. Everyone pulling in the same direction.
There is a clear mission, and that is to go public in a big way.
Every Friday the company buys lunch and we teleconference with our Athens office to get the latest scoop from the execs, so every employee knows just how the company is progressing.

All engineering effort goes into actual product design and testing. We have very short product cycles with a good balance of schedule vs risk. No dinking around in engineering planning meetings all day and not being able to get your work done. And the Engineering VP makes sure everyone has the equipment they need.

And the technology truly is the wave of the future for Data Storage. ATA over Ethernet (AoE) communication using typical network switches gives line saturation speed with port redundancy for free. It's all about elegant SW design here starting with company founder Brantley Coile (who designed and coded Cisco's PIX firewall and NAT appliance).
We actually saw and got to say hello to Ken Thompson (who created Unix with Dennis Ritchie) when he visited Brantley. Geniuses are just walking around here, which is a great learning opportunity for me!

Cons

It's a start-up, so you get what comes with a start-up.

We work long hours, but it's fun seeing features getting implemented in days and weeks instead of months and years (like at a large company).
Also Engineering cubes are in the same room with everyone else, so some engineers wear headphones to deal with the noise.

The bay area location is mid-Peninsula near Oracle, so depending on where you live there could be commute issues. I'm in Sunnyvale so it's about 30 minutes each way if I drive. But there is a shuttle from the train station that services these office buildings, so I do that sometimes.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep doing what you are doing!
Product marketing, keep us on the right track. Engineering keep executing. And we will all keep those Sales folks landing bigger and better deals.