Vantaggi
This is the best place I've ever worked, bar none. People are dauntingly smart, friendly, and helpful, the work is challenging but interesting, the benefits are very good, and the pace - while certainly subject to the occasional flurry of long hours - is remarkably life- and family-friendly. I'm sure that some of this has to do with the ability to work remotely as needed, and I imagine all of this is variable by the team, but I've met mostly really happy and satisfied people here. While there are politics and tsuris everywhere, I've seen far less of what feels like some of the ugly back-stabbing and political maneuvering here than at many places I've worked. Senior management seems as open and communicative as anywhere I've ever been, and Tom Leighton is a wonderful face and voice of leadership for the organization (with some pretty stylin' dance moves, too). Most importantly - and I can only say this about my own team and manager, but I gather that it is true in many parts of the company - I feel supported in all of my efforts; that my manager is interested not only in getting the best work out of her team, but that we are happy, satisfied in our work, not overburdened, and with a clear direction in which to head to keep our careers moving forward.
Svantaggi
This is a very complex and highly technical space to be in, and if you come in with no domain knowledge, there will be some serious ramp up and learning you need to do. Fortunately, the company is great about training and giving you the room and resources to bring yourself up to speed. One challenge is that, while there are many, many resources for improving your understanding of the space and the Akamai ecosystem, FINDING those resources can be tricky, and sometimes what you find is out of date. Getting accurate information from the right people can sometimes be a challenge. Also, while the company is very committed to UX, getting access to actual customers on a UX basis is not something ingrained in the fabric here yet, and it can be tricky. There is also not yet a good communication structure between UX teams, so there is a lot of overlap, unanswered questions, and asking forgiveness rather than permission. Finally, if you start after a certain point in the year, you end up being not eligible for a bonus when the time rolls around (I started a week after that cutoff, it turned out). It would be far better if they prorated the bonus structure for the part of the year in which you were with the company, rather than just cut you loose. It would at least have been nice to have been told this during recruitment to set my expectations properly, since bonuses were touted as a pretty big part of the benefit structure.