Vantaggi
- Home to incredibly intelligent individuals (who are often work outside of their domain of expertise, but still intelligent nonetheless). - Food and social activities are pushed (but far from required). It's a nice touch, and I think they are going in the right direction, encouraging more involvement. - Decent health coverage. - Interesting work (with its downsides). - Fairly quiet office. No open office plan or anything like that. Typically 2 people to an office.
Svantaggi
- There is a culture of overwork with no push against it. Both management and the employees just expect to work long, arduous hours to meet deadlines for proposals and demos. This could usually be avoided with careful planning, but no one has the time or forethought to do so. Many of my colleagues were/are physically and mentally exhausted. - The work is spread too thin. There are too many projects to work on with not enough people, leading to what I felt was subpar work. - No real mentoring or learning opportunities. Everything I learned was on my own. - Poor collaboration, especially between groups (with one exception). - The pay is fairly low for the area. - The work feels like shelfware with no actual users. - The work is very slow going, government centric work. - Very few young people. If you are single with no kids, you are definitely in the minority. - No 401k matching for the first year. - 6 year vesting schedule for profit sharing plan. - At least 1-2 toxic individuals who everyone seemed to detest, yet they were somehow promoted while I was there. The overall enjoyment is highly dependent on the group you work with. I suspect it is something like a 50/50 shot, whether you will enjoy who you work with and what you do. These odds are going to be decreased if you are more of a developer.