Pros
- Great benefits compared to many other companies in the US, e.g. more vacation time, health insurance with a benefit supplement made insurance essentially free, and flexible time off
- Some decent exposure to production infrastructure that offered some transferrable experience, as well as some pretty friendly developers that were happy to speak with me when I had a technical question that dealt more with the underlying code and workings of the software, rather than a simple helpdesk query.
- Work from home opportunities
- Some professional development assistance
- Worked with some really great people I still keep in touch with today
- Senior leadership was pretty good-- I only met and interacted with some of them briefly but never got the impression they were rude to me.
Cons
- Lots of politicking and rumor spreading behind people's back, particularly a couple people that made it very difficult to work with and who still remain there.
- Not a meritocracy whatsoever, it was all about whose good side you were on when it came to promotions or moving on from the role. In my case, rather than backfill me with someone less senior when I tried to move into a position that had opened in another team (that I'd expressed interest in during my interview), my move was blocked by a manager, and ultimately I never got the position due to this.
- Poor hiring filter-- it seemed that towards the end of my tenure, some of the people who had been hired didn't really have a particularly technical mindset and were a poor fit for the role, which put a lot of stress on the folks who were carrying the brunt of the workload. It seems as though the person hiring was not technical themselves, and didn't fully understand what the role entailed.
- Underpaid to some degree. When I first started the role, I was making 10 grand less than a coworker who had been hired in the same position at the same time with similar experience. After exploring other opportunities for some time, they countered with a salary that was more fair.