Vantaggi
The CEO put up his life saving to start the company and is very invested in it. But more so than that, he was very conscientious of the stewardship that he carried as an employer. That he gave people jobs and that improve their lives mattered a lot to him. Beyond just the CEO, a lot of the people were amazing and treated you more like family than employees. It created a great culture where you felt secure in your job and in the company.
Svantaggi
Like all companies, there were unscrupulous people. Commission based sales groups at every company in the world will be dominated by unethical people who's only goal is making as much money as possible. The problem at SM is that those people were left unchecked and even promoted to key positions. That meant that when extremely unethical tactics were discovered, not only were they not stopped . They were adopted as the new policy. This led to horrifically unethical sales processes that in several instances that I directly knew about, actually crossed the line into illegality. That created a moral dilemma for me that was impossible to reconcile. Sales as a department in that company holds 80% of the influence on everything that happens. That meant that products became underfunded, rushed to release and never fixed. Customer satisfaction dropped, quality dropped Everything became only about the quarterly goals. The company from a customer facing perspective has no integrity and very little legitimacy left and they probably won't exist in another ten years because of the scorched earth business tactics.