Pros
The Portland office has some fantastic people in it. Your coworkers feel like friends, and often there are people chatting and hanging around after work. My 5 stars for the culture is solely for the Portland office, I have not seen any other offices, or headquarters. And even then, that is because of the culture that was present from before the acquisition, not the culture that Accela has attempted to introduce or change. The work is often fast paced and interesting. The product direction can be confusing at times, but you will have alot of control over the projects you are given to work on. There is also a large need for developers and engineers who can build amazing software. Their vision relies on technical staff who have a rock solid understanding of software, web services, application support, and data management. There is a huge opportunity for those who have those skills to be given the opportunity to head up some amazing projects.
Cons
Since the acquisitions, there is a lot of pressure to perform. The company has had more than one wave of layoffs recently, and that means there is a lot of tension among employees. I expect that very few employees feel safe or secure in their position. The only reasons given for these layoffs is "trimming of the fat" and other metaphors that make it seem like you must produce X number of dollars in order to be safe. Even then, lots of employees that were senior and had significant knowledge were let go. The company is still figuring out what to do with all the acquired companies, and while they have a vision for the future of their products, it seems like management has no clue how to actually execute their vision. There is also a tendency for upper management to make promises to actual managers (as in, people dealing with the day to day work and oversight) and employees that they fail to follow through on. For example, the entire Portland office is not compensated very well for their job titles and work effort. Upper management constantly promise a "market rate adjustment" that hasn't happened yet, and seems like it never will based on recent layoffs. The turnover lately is rather high due to these layoffs and failure to increase compensation.