Great job out of school with incredible opportunities for growth and advancement - with some significant drawbacks.
Pros
-Incredible strategic direction by executive & senior management -Great financials translates directly to high stability -Lots of opportunity for advancement and growth -Upper management is very accessible for even the lowliest peon -Poised to explode in growth over the next several years due to recent product success -Nice office -Exceptional co-workers -Customer interfacing A lot of the posts here seemed very uninformed and/or bitter in their complaints about management. I've worked for companies that had horrible management and ARGO is definitely not one of them. Upper Management is highly intelligent, capable, and very approachable - this is something you really won't find anywhere else. The financial success of the company translates directly to growth which means there are a *lot* of opportunities for anyone who wants to go after them. ARGO is all about results and if you're a badass then they not only want to keep you, but they want to promote you. On the flip side, people that can't pull their own weight will get fired without a second thought* - this is great for achievers, who can't stand slackers, and bad for slackers themselves. The people are great, regardless of department, as ARGO manages to draw in a lot of talent through their recruiting process. Customer interfacing is a big part of most development roles and if you want that kind of experience it's a great place to go. Bottom line - this place is growing fast, has a lot of opportunity, and will be a wonderful place to work in another 5 years after it's been 'modernized' a bit more. *developers don't seem to get fired - I'll cover this in the Cons
Cons
-Environment is a little stiff, especially for a place that recruits out of college. Needs significant modernization (this is apparently in progress, but progress is slow) -Pay is on the lower end - especially after a few years. -Raises seem to only come with promotions; no tuition reimbursement -Poor developers don't seem to get fired due to resource constraints. -Working with a proprietary technology is very bad if you want to develop your resume -Long hours are pretty common There's a major problem with retention at ARGO, which is mostly related to a) the technology; devs are scared to get multiple years of experience in some proprietary markup language b) the pay is a bit low, especially when the job market is improving and employees are seeing 20-30% raises for hopping to another job which ALSO uses a relevant technology like Java or C# The owner is very conservative and as a result the company environment is a little stiff. Developers seem to be immune to getting fired due to resource constraints - we have some seriously slacker developers that don't do anything all day long and still get paid. This is demoralizing for those of us actually working hard on whatever project we're assigned to. Poor management of expectations, over-promising to customers, and letting customers get away with too much scope creep results in frequent long hours.
