Vantaggi
Netchemia truly hires and fires by their company values, which include having Entrepreneurial Spirit, Putting Team Before Self and engaging in Constructive Conflict (among others). It's like working for a big startup. Even though they've been in business for 10+ years now there is still a great deal of change, experimentation with various process improvements and a general "fail fast" mentality that you would expect from a startup, yet there are none of the crazy work hours or financial instability of a true startup. Work life balance is excellent. I rarely work more than 40 hours a week. There are plenty of "extra-curricular" activities, like sporting events, happy hours, volleyball/softball/basketball teams, yoga, etc, but there is also no pressure to be part of those. Transparency from leadership is unparalleled: Every week we have a standing meeting where the entire company crams into the larger conference room and hears updates from every department. Once a month, this meeting extends into our monthly financials meeting where Carlos (CEO) shows us all the real numbers for the company (sales, goals, profit, loss). We are encouraged to ask questions about anything we see. The executive team has also recently started giving monthly updates of each of the strategic bi-annual goals of the company, to keep themselves (and others) accountable before the entire company. I've never heard or seen this level of transparency from an executive team before and it is outstanding. Collaboration is excellent. The open environment, focus on constructive conflict and company culture endorse collaboration on many levels. The developer team is the most collaborative I've ever seen. It's not uncommon for us to "swarm" around an emergency goal to get it done quickly. There are competitive foosball tournaments twice daily at established times (11:30am, 4:30pm). Employees from several departments compete and smack talk. The development team frequently plays music on Friday's and someone usually buys some beers for Friday afternoon. Genuine work hard, play hard atmosphere.
Svantaggi
The interviewing process is intentionally intense. They put every candidate through several long and involved interviews, culminating with a final, high-stress hour long meeting with the entire executive team. Surviving the interview process is sort of a rite of passage that is intentionally focused on bringing out your true colors and what you're really made of. It's a very expensive interviewing process for the company, both because of the number of steps involved and all the employees that participate in it (including leadership). Again, this is all intentional. I believe the thought is that, by making sure only the highest caliber of candidates that are a perfect fit get through, there's a lower chance of firing/quitting later on which I imagine ends up being even more costly and harmful to the company in the long run. Because of the rapid growth of the company (roughly doubling every 18 months for the last 3 years) we're rapidly outgrowing the current building (as of Nov 2013). This can be a problem for some people, since it's an open desk environment (no cubes, walls or offices, even for the execs), space is limited and loud phone calls can be very distracting. Some of the entry-level roles, such as Market Development Representatives have a high turnover rate. I personally believe this is due to the nature of the work being very challenging, being on the phones all day, making calls like crazy, with a high rejection rate. Having said that, there are several examples of employees that have mastered this particular role well and have successfully progressed to other roles and departments throughout the company as their strengths have been recognized. Although I'm reasonably happy with my pay, several coworkers have expressed concern that their pay is below market value. There is a general feeling that because the culture is so strong at Netchemia, the company can afford to pay everyone below market rate and most people will stay at the company. Pay seems to be a common reason why people leave Netchemia. Your mileage may vary.