It's like an abusive relationship you convince yourself to stay with
Pros
-Used to have a lot of autonomy - learned a lot my first few years -Incredible mission -Used to have a really fun, family culture - met some lifelong friends and mentors here -Good compensation if you are in a high-level role -Unlimited PTO and great maternity/paternity leave -You get to build a lot from scratch, which can be really fun with enough experience and in the right org (finance, sometimes sales, maybe software) -I actually thought work life balance was great, but distribution of work is pretty uneven
Cons
-If you're interested in product, operations, engineering, HR or marketing: run. Axon does not have the right expertise or leadership at the top. You'll spend your time catering to an exec who doesn't know what he's doing, but doesn't like to feel inferior; if you make suggestions for improvement, you might be called negative, discredited behind your back, or fired. I witnessed it happen to over 30 people at all levels in my several years there. And he will override your data-driven decisions with no interest in hearing about the details or context. -If you're early career: run. The company over-indexed on early career talent a few years ago, which created a company of people with 3-5 years of experience but no one to take it to the next level or teach young talent how to do even entry-level. Go learn from a company that does your field of interest correctly. Then maybe try again. There is no longer be room for you to shine and work your way up. -Sketchy, sketchy stuff going down. Coercion to buy into the XSPP stock program by the president before it was voted on; data being faked due to fear of said president; forcing customers to take product to hit quarterly targets; hiding quality issues to meet a product launch deadline. You'll watch yourself change if you stay too long. Or you'll be fired before you do. There's a reason they pay people a lot of severance and "cut the bottom 10% every year." -Terrible systems and inefficient processes. 25 years' worth of bandaid fixes make for a LOT of waste. Big cash investments hide how much waste there is and de-incentivize efforts to fix it.
