Pros
Tech-for-good from the top, with some very talented folks. If you like a solid, social mission, this is a great place to be. The Engineering function uses up-to-date tools and approaches and has kept the approach sustainable. There's a real focus on gathering feedback from the team and a lot of space for people to suggest changes to ways of working, tooling, technical approach etc. Squads are given a lot of autonomy in their ways of working, and people report retros as being valuable sources of positive change (a rarity!). We have kept the bar high when hiring and we have grown a fantastic team with little attrition. They are a real pleasure to work with.
Cons
Higher Education is a relatively complex and slow-moving industry, facing financial pressures. Buyers and users don't always share the same priorities. It's not entirely clear whether the company is still a "start-up". Selling to large academic institutions means the administrative overhead of accreditation like SOC2, but there is also the sense of urgency and fear about the changing ecosystem and pivots still happen sometimes. Certainly the ambition is for the company to grow much bigger and positively impact many more people. We pay well for comparative size companies in similar industries, but that's inevitably a bit lower than much larger companies or more lucrative industries.