Pros
Interesting projects, allowing scientists considerable technical autonomy. Some brilliant, hard-working staff members. Good work-life balance is usually possible. Excellent opportunity to earn a clearance and become familiar with technical writing and good software practices. Beautiful suite with nice offices. There are occasional catered lunches and a nice holiday party. The IT infrastructure is surprisingly well developed. The CEO is charismatic, risk-tolerant, and generally makes reasonable decisions. One of the directors in particular is a joy to work with.
Cons
Turnover is out of control: as a rough guess, the average person lasts maybe 18 months, only a few people last longer than 3 years, and no one except the owner has made it more than 5 years (the company is 10 years old). Some of the reasons: Employee appreciation. People are paid, promoted, and respected according to their years of experience, but many senior technical positions are perpetually vacant, requiring others to step up. The trouble is that extraordinary efforts or successes are rarely rewarded (not even verbally, and certainly not with raises or promotions). On the contrary, management will only state that your work was “adequate” and that you “did what was expected of you.” Thus, while employees as a whole are treated reasonably, employees individually feel undervalued, and grievances tend to accumulate. Second, management makes all the decisions given only bullet-level inputs from the technical teams (most corporate leaders only dabble in the technical side, and vice versa). So, the project PIs are generally qualified, but have little control over their teams, culture, or workload. On the contrary, it has happened that a corporate officer actually undermined the PI (e.g., by making disparaging comments about the PI to the PI’s staff). Finally, mentorship is very limited. Everyone is approachable and happy to answer questions, but there is no structure for individual mentorship, technical or otherwise. Indeed, multiple people have had serious concerns about their performance be raised for the first time during a formal performance review.
