Strong fundamentals; working on going "big corporate"
Pros
Great mission. Great food. Not a veggie myself but still the food is great and you get it highly discounted as an employee. Private and family owned but daily operations and many large strategic decisions are controlled by outsiders now. Founders are ageing and the company namesake isn’t exactly stepping up to run the company (not yet, anyway). Very different culture now vs. when I started. They actually write their cultural values on the wall now (after shelling out big bucks to a consulting company to help them articulate) vs. before where the culture was implied and understood by corporate actions, family ownership, etc. Most employees love the company-owned health centers. Cheap co-pays, small offices, and very attentive physicians and staff that spend a lot of time with you. 90-95-percent of your preventative healthcare can probably be taken care of at these health centers. Paltry bonuses for the rank-and-file but there is a decent 401(k) match. Health benefits are so-so overall. They are self-insured but work through health plan administrators so it works basically the same as Aetna, Blue Cross, etc. Big future for the drive-thru IF they work hard to make it profitable. It’s been more of a money-pit show piece for the family thus far. Great idea though, customers love it, and I hope they can replicate and execute on it. The goofy grass roofs, reclaimed wood, and water towers panders brilliantly to the uber-liberal Bay Area intelligentsia but it doesn’t scale to more than a few locations. Get serious about stripping down your formula so it’s way, way cheaper to build and operate the stores. You’re not getting to 100+ locations with barn doors and expensive bathroom sinks. Keep it simple.
Cons
IT has radically changed culturally from when I started and since a CIO was hired. No longer warm, inviting, and loosely run and heading rapidly toward the “big corporate IT” ethos. Necessary, no doubt, but still tough. Management is mercurial: Oddly draconian, paternalistic, and punitive some days; seemingly reasonable and open other days. Not particularly transparent. Radical cultural changes were made without a clear vision or direction from CIO level on down. Honestly never seen or experienced anything quite as odd and difficult to predict and read in my many years in the tech. business. Certainly my perception is more than colored by my long history, but it was still quite clear many significant changes were implemented without warning. So… long term such changes are probably better for the company (time will tell…) but the culture of the past is now long dead. Certainly it was not all roses back then: Lots of randomization, lack of transparency and openness, no clear vision, we just “did our jobs” and yes it was fun and quite low stress most days. I don’t suppose the management and departmental ownership was very “adult” for most of my time there but it was a fun ride while it lasted. You don’t get the ability to entirely chart your own course very often in your career. Nearly all internal IT infrastructure is heading toward the cloud (slowly - it will take years) and what remains of that carcass into managed service providers. Almost no internal ownership and technical expertise is left. IT management's perception is technical talent is a commodity and it's cheaper to purchase it hourly vs. invest in people internally. The ultimate message was clear: You are disposable. Typical big corporate IT impersonal outsource-it-all playbook execution.
