Vantaggi
The team is genuinely collaborative and there's no toxic "every man for himself" atmosphere you get at more competitive companies. The work-life balance is solid — I've rarely had to work past 6pm and on-call pressure is minimal. You get handed real ownership fairly early, which is great for building confidence. The tech stack is modern and the codebase is actually reasonably well maintained. Management is approachable and there's no micromanagement.
Svantaggi
Career progression is the elephant in the room. There are essentially two levels for engineers and once you hit the second, that's more or less where you stay until someone leaves or a new team is formed. Compensation bumps are modest — good enough to keep you comfortable but not enough to keep pace with the market long term. I've had to be quite self-directed about my own growth because there's no real structured mentorship or development plan. After a while you do start to wonder whether you're still learning or just maintaining.