Great if all you want is to be a code monkey
Pros
- Work/life balance is bar none. You aren't expected to work overtime very often (at least on the core development team, that can't be said for their "cloud" team). - Celebrate birthdays each month - Gym membership to OneLife - 401K matching has finally been implemented after years of asking. - Great medical/dental/vision - Great break rooms with TVs, game systems, and a pool table - Beautiful office that strikes a balance between cubicles and open floor plans. It's a great place to be if you are either a recent grad looking to learn or are settling down with family. You will be challenged occasionally but the family oriented culture ensures these challenges will be worked through together so that everyone can go home on time. The camaraderie is very strong and everyone works to make sure we succeed as individuals, teams, and as a company. Everyone is friendly, after three years I had not met anyone I don't like.
Cons
First and foremost DSI is a sales company. No matter how much they talk about being a software company, it's all about the sales. It’s very rare for a project with little to no sales potential is moved forward; most of the time it’s when the technical debt breaks through the ceiling and causes catastrophic problems. But don't bother trying to pitch new ideas that could save developers dozens of hours a month. Don’t bother trying to fix problems, you only get in trouble and looked down upon for trying to help and do the right thing. Meanwhile there are more problems than can be handled. Upper management is composed of former enterprise developers, so there isn't any desire to use technology post-2000. The phrase "we are enterprise" is used as an excuse to maintain status quo because the fear of anything going wrong is so intense that despite things going wrong without it, change (read improvement), is seen as too risky. If you care about reducing technical debt and future proofing the product, this isn't the place for you. If you don't want to throw features on top of spaghetti mountain, this is not the place for you. If you want high quality DevOps with a CI/CD pipeline that provides early warnings of problems, this is not the place for you. Heck, everyone ignores the warnings and errors from the build pipeline of the back-end because it fails on a regular basis for no reason, just commit again and it will probably get through. There is little to no room for advancement, there are talented developers who have been here for years and haven't risen above the junior most position. I saw a single developer get promoted in my time here. Speaking of advancement, developers are being pulled off of development to do non-programming tasks for weeks, months, or even as permanent positions; which actively harms career growth and sets them behind others in the field. Expect to be paid below market rate and for your salary to never rise to meet that rate. They try to use their bonus structure as an argument that they pay competitively but even with bonuses the total earnings is still far below base pay that you can get pretty much anywhere else in Kansas City. Not to mention starting this year they’ve made it harder for certain groups to get bonuses. I could go on, but I think the picture should be clear: this isn’t a place for someone who wants to be more than a code monkey therefore I cannot recommend working here.
