Pros
High quality people. The best manager I've had. The work is completely project focused; as a consultant, you don't get caught up in day-to-day fires and low-value work that tends to eat up much of a regular Full-Time position. The single-focused work accelerates skills. For those looking for an internship like I was, there's not a better environment. There's pressure: CATCH has high-standards, tight deadlines, and customers who expect to get their money's worth. If you can stand the pressure, CATCH will turn you into a diamond. Why did I leave if it's so great? After several years as a consultant, I wanted to work on a data environment I also had to own long-term. You can't know the true pros and cons of design decisions until you own your work over years. But being exposed to dozens of enterprise environments and learning what works and doesn't from both the amazing devs at CATCH and at the clients, just WOW. What a leg up!
Cons
Every new client feels like starting a new job. But with no grace period to get up to speed. You're expected to deliver results quickly. This is a great thing when the client extends your contract; 80% of my time at CATCH was spent on just 3 clients who kept extending me. 2x for well over a year each. But in between long-term clients? It gets rough. 2-3 week mini projects with a brand new tech stack to figure out. Sometimes the work doesn't line up with what you want to do. That's the con. It's the nature of the work; it forces you to expand. For me, the discomfort was a small price to pay for the skills and dev environment exposure.
