Pros
Good coworkers, nice location, benefits. There's a foosball table downstairs. Some ability to gain technical skills if you want to self-teach. One of the teams is actually agile. Many of the coworkers are compassionate, good people who you can really identify with. About 20% of the development in Birmingham is done on a current tech stack, though less is done with current practices. They are the biggest software company in the niche they serve at the moment, and they buy all competition, so job security is pretty good.
Cons
Abysmal tech stack in the main product lines. The 'Agile Transformation' has transformed most teams into Agile only in the sense that they do waterfall, but with Burndown charts and User Stories now. None (okay, maybe one) of the teams are actually given the leeway to decide for themselves how they deliver software. Management and business do not communicate clearly what is going on in the business, what long term plans are, or in most cases what is coming in the next month or weeks. They hire students straight out of college so they can offer bad compensation packages. There is no path for technical success at the company. Expect to keep the same title you start with for the entirety of your time at the company. Some coworkers had been working in the same exact position for ten years when I started, with the same title I started with. If you want to advance to management from the technical side, good luck joining the boys' club. Very little diversity in the company.
