Vantaggi
Great culture - very professional, cordial, and friendly, really makes you feel good when you walk into the office wearing business casual. Management has open door policy, which is great. Everyone's opinion matters and if you believe your opinion has merit, senior management makes it a point to listen to it. Awesome location in old town of Alexandria. Two blocks from the water front, many places to grab food within walking distance.
Svantaggi
Product development group is second to nuclear energy group, so it does not get the same treatment as far as development and investment are concerned. Pay is not competitive for the area given high cost of living, and from what I've seen throughout the years, salaries have been shrinking. Incentives through employee owner program seem to be more of a lottery / seniority thing rather than connected to any real performance. Management is squeezing profit margins at the expense of staffing the group with out-of-college recruits with no practical experience. This lowers the group's competences and positions us poorly to compete for real business. I've yet to see a real interesting project. Seems we only get the stuff nobody cares to work on. Don't think I ever came across a project that was on-time and on-budget. Relatively high turn-over rate in product development group, especially in folks that are decent. Just means more training of new recruits for the rest of us.