Pros
I worked at Balsam Brands for over a year. Among the great things at BB were my co-workers, in-season perks, WFH Wednesdays (before COVID), opportunities to grow and build the company. The Learning and Development team also did a fantastic job with regards to training team members as it relates to management, and personal development and understanding. I can't stress enough how great most of my collogues were to work with. I worked primarily with our Boise, Dublin, and Manilla teams, and it was wonderful to have an opportunity to work with them. I genuinely miss having the opportunity to work at the office and having lunch with my teammates. Despite the limited PTO, the work life balance was great and I was always able to take time that I needed.
Cons
Among the biggest "cons" would be the disconnected teams and long term vision. All companies have issues and looking back I think these could easily be solved with focus from leadership. With regards to disconnected teams this could have been solved with a better overall understanding across functions/teams of an individual's role, assigned projects, and workload. While there is a PMO, there isn't the coordination or project visibility that I would expect to see when people are juggling operational issues and feature/horizon projects across the enterprise. This leads to ambiguity and self prioritization of work that seems like it may or may not have a place in the value stream. PM's and coordinators do a great job, but having project charters/visions/kickoffs would add some guard rails. As far as the long term vision, the company does a good job of having town halls to communicate what's going on across the company. However, the goals and vision are more abstract than I would have liked to see. This causes ambiguity and leads to interpretation of what is important for the company to move forward.