Chaotic environment with poor product and layoffs
Pros
For now, the occasional free food. snacks are decent. Smart coworkers and ok ish compensation. Good access to AI tools. Clearance processing if you value it
Cons
Repeated reorgs, mass layoffs and constant PIPs are the noise. But the real killer is the poor product, internal tooling and platform stability. You will end up firefighting random server restarts, syncing issues, unhealthy pods that delete all your painstaking setup and unnecessarily abstracted layers of proprietary stacks that don't teach transferrable skills. There is deep pessimism and skepticism about product and platform direction, the direction the reorgs took and their communication downwards. I have never been at a company where so many people were openly despondent. The comp had declined precipitously as it's highly stock dependent, and bonuses are questionable as layoffs have happened to people just before it would vest or be awarded. Without a 401k match and having to pay for parking, the falling stock price pushes comp to just mediocre level. The 5x in office (or regular random client site(s) 1+ hour away, occasional cross state traveling) is the final cherry on top. Once you're in, it's hard to get out, unless you're PIP'ed / RIF'ed
