Pros
The intimate, highly driven team culture of this web-application startup is proof that work life balance can exist even in the fast-paced business environment of Silicon Valley. The management consistently maintains the same level of respect and high expectations for all employees, and works hard to include everyone in the company culture, both professionally and socially. I enjoyed a high level of ownership of my project, and was encouraged to develop the interpersonal skills necessary to present and get feedback on my ideas from team members and customers. The entire staff is expected to do a lot of learning to keep up with the fast development cycles and ambitious product vision, but fortunately there's a lot of help along the way. There are simply too many interesting technical and product development challenges to tackle to have anything but an entirely collaborative and supportive team environment. To sweeten the whole deal, Big Tent is located in San Francisco, which is a fantastic place to live and work.
Cons
Despite the relatively small size of the company, the employees are functionally divided into an engineering and business team with very different roles and work cultures. It takes a bit of effort to collaborate effectively across this functional divide, given the difference in work schedules and priorities. There tend to be more meetings and less time to do development work in the office than I would like, but the management is very responsive to what employees feel they need to be productive. As with most startups, the compensation at BigTent is competitive but by no means lavish, which is certainly something to consider in big cities like San Francisco with a high cost of living.