Vantaggi
-Causal environment without good air conditioners, flat structure with strict internal ranks, most staffs are friendly and easy going, pay is just enough to pay rent in Hong Kong island -Ah, yeah, there are so many used screens for developers because people keep leaving. You can have two 30-inch screens to place IDEs everywhere!
Svantaggi
-Hard working with hands will never not get recognized. Hard working with communication and documentation get you promoted because Sr. Management live on that. -High turnover of senior mates up to CIO level. Most lead devs left this year caused huge impact on system performance and development delivery. The plans always lay on blueprint, yes that is consistent with current IT philosophy: Painting our bright future! -Experienced and well-recognized CIO replaced by biased Java team lead. As a non-Java programmer you will feel the pain of dancing with his chains. No strategy (or hacks?) any more, just spend endless time meeting about "proper" process and "informative" logging for support to point fingers. Again, can not agree more with "support heaven" comment, support is the best department ( or recruiters?) because they can bring in all processes they have learnt or heard of. Management (traders) trust them more than us so give them same or higher base and bonus as developers. Career development? Does that matter for seasoned team leads? Old soldiers never die. They just fade away!