Pros
- Flexible time off - There are still a few well-intentioned, smart, engineers - Decent 401k plan - Was 100% remote from 2020-2024
Cons
- Brain drain due to poor management / bureaucracy . (Many Senior / Lead Engineers opted to leave the company during my 4 years there...leading to knowledge gaps and higher workloads for those who remained.) - Ongoing dept. restructurings consistently moving away from a "software culture" in favor of a business oriented culture. - Increasingly less focus on code quality / skill development / growth mindset, and more emphasis on bottom line deliverables and tight deadlines, measured by unrealistic "quantifiable metrics" (like Sprint Reports, OKRs, etc). - Too much time wasted in meetings. Every other week in the Sprint cycle there are 2.5-3 days of packed with back to back meetings, for teams to refine, organize, and write out tasks, acceptance criterea, and sprint goals, as a collective group in JIRA (which *should be the PM's main role, so the coders can focus on engineering). So every other week you'll be in meetings for three days straight from 9-5, and the remainder of the sprint you will be lucky to have days where youu only have 3-4 hours of meetings (most of which will be irrelevant to your work). - Dept business needs keep shifting in unpredictable directions and Engineers with niche specialties become expected to work within other code ecosystems, doing work that is foreign to their skillset, with little to zero support, or any resources given to be successful. Even if you ask your manager for help, I've seen many colleagues ignored, and pushed out / laid off for "lack of performance" in these scenarios. - Those who question management are reprimanded (not overtly, but marked and slowly and subtilely punished with fabricated "coaching plans" and denied bonuses)