Pros
Relaxed dress code and an ideal location for employees who live on the north side. Some great ideas for products. Opportunity to work on some name brand companies.
Cons
The CEO is a charismatic and visionary leader and was the initial reason why I decided to stay with the company even once the glow of a new job wore off. Even my manager, who really treats us like respected individuals and listens to our ideas may not be able to keep me much longer. I was warned by my peers early on not to cross a certain VP or speak a contradictory viewpoint as once that's done, you can forget any chance of a promotion or transfer, even if you are in a low position. In my team I have seen this come to pass and it disappointed me. This fits with a previous review I read that you must "drink the koolaid" and then promote the koolaid. Do not doubt that for a minute. Information is funneled from the top down with very little transparency and to criticize is to doom yourself. And be careful if you cross the functional silos. You may be offered up for slaughter if you screw up, unless you are on one of the lucky teams whose manager truly cares about you as a person and what you bring to the job. The idea behind the company is a good one. If developed and leveraged correctly it would yield incredible results. Unfortunately product directions change so often we can't keep up with what we are required to do; forget what we should be doing. I can't help but think this is a distorted vision of what our CEO originally set out to create and I don't know what will happen now that a much larger company, ADP, has acquired us. Maybe our department will be provided an actual vision now, who knows. Initial transparency on the acquisition was quite good but has faded dramatically to almost zilch in the last month. This trend, coupled with a senior management team that lacks clarity and focus, keeps me from referring others even though we have openings, as I can't in good faith put them in this position. I saw a few posts where good work/life balance was mentioned. I don't know if I agree with that entirely. It's incredibly rare that anyone works more than 8 hours a day. I believe this is due more to poor morale than a true work/life balance way of thinking. On the vast majority of teams, no one works more than their 8 hours because they don't want to. This is something that higher salaries, which I think are needed in some areas, will not fix. All in all, not remotely what I expected when I signed up.
