Pros
Growth As my first career job in the creative field, I was able to learn something new with every project. Over 5 years, I was mentored from each department of DeveloperTown: design, development, project management, and even the owners wanted to teach from their experiences in sales, business, and just life. I found life long friends that I still can just talk to which is a sign they truly cared about their employees. Leaving DeveloperTown was difficult, but I had learned everything I could at the time and wanted to grow in other aspects of design. Healthcare / Benefits / Other Something new for me to start early in my career. I was able to have healthcare, start my 401K, and participate in profit sharing (still have no clue how that works though). Some of just the day to day benefits included lunch & learns from my coworkers, access to all of the events we hosted, and (with the unique office we had) cultivating friendships with countless companies and leaders in the industry that had offices in the building, or clients that came in. Work Environment (reading a previous posts this stood out to me) "I've never worked with a company that promotes as healthy a work-life balance as DeveloperTown". There was always something going on that could be distracting at times, but also made every day new and welcoming cause you didn't know what to expect. Employees and partners were always friendly and caring about what was going on welcomed a chat or just wanted to hang out. Not being forced into a 8-5 type of job made it relaxing and self leading. I knew what I had to get done, I set my schedule, and was able to not have to worry about being late.
Cons
For me personally, I felt like I had been passed up on some potential advancement in the company due to leadership showing favoritism and a lack of communication to me as what was needed. To that point though, I was young in my career and wanted to help out to please the leaders in the office and show that I was dedicated to the company. I did everything that was asked of me and even not asked of me, to help out around the office, which took away from me focusing on my career. I was a dedicated employee and was usually one of the first in and last out of the office which caused my work life balance, not to be soo "balanced" or sustainable in the long run. (This is a lesson learned on my side.) Towards the end of my time at DeveloperTown, it seemed as if growth was more important than polishing who we really were as a company. Some of the initiatives that leadership were focused on didn't seem to match (if not completely go against) what we had been building in the 5 years I was there. I am a perfectionist, and that really was a pain to watch some days.
