Pros
- established product lines / market share - if you are an offshored office worker or H1B worker and you are willing to be used for a few years on boring work with paychecks coming from the sale of existing products, it will meet your short-term employment / visa goals. (That's why I am here despite the pain. Giving 2 stars because of this.)
Cons
- Mediocre management at Sr Director / Director levels in this Software/ Algorithm team, especially at the Headquarters location - Legacy code hacked over the last few decades. My job and of my colleagues is fixing bugs and boring releases of this beast. Clear disappointment compared with the projects I undertook in my advanced degree not too far ago - Cost cutting emphasis through the use of offshored cheap labor and H1B labor. An example of why this issue spills over into political debate. To be fair and realistic, many companies are doing it. The problem is that your compensation will get naturally compromised. - Outsourcing of innovation perhaps because management is incompetent in it. Again, not a new story with similar organisations in a similar state with goals of maintenance of cash cows and incremental releases. - Darwinian evolution over time. Mediocre people who fit in the above culture survive through politics. Difficult to bring changes due to this entrenchment. Existing product lines do keep on selling. We all know that that's how companies work. Nothing new here about this real-world business law. - Competent people who don't fit in the above culture get routinely pushed out after a period of using them up and burning them out. Again, to be fair, this is a routine practice in many businesses these days. The problem is that you won't learn much in your experience during bug fixing - Dull and boring job on legacy code. Smiling engineers are rare.