Pros
The people. How Shapeways still manages to attract strong employees is beyond me. The team is smart, motivated, driven, entrepreneurial and very creative--that goes for the team at LIC and the corporate office team. I still keep in touch with my colleagues and most have gone on to jobs at awesome orgs like Etsy, Foursquare, Sols, Google etc. That shows the level of talent that Shapeways attracts.
Cons
After some time marinating on this, I truly believe that nearly every issue at Shapeways can be linked to the CEO. He is a very difficult person to work with, here's why: He loves to challenge everyone on everything (even if he agrees with them), don't look for any pats on the back, as he believes that positive feedback has a negative impact on performance, he is seriously lacking in the social skills department, he has zero idea how to motivate people, you always have the sense that he's out for himself. . .what happened with the other co-founders of the company. . .hmmmmm. Like everyone else says, the pay is terrible and the CEO loves to lowball people. That was an ethical issue that played a large part in my decision to leave--the factory workers are beyond underpaid and taken care of- THIS IS NYC, NOT HOLLAND. They got a round of new funding, how about leveling up the entire team's salaries? How about instrumenting the team so that they have the tools they need to their jobs? Where is the money going to?