Pros
- ICs come from top schools (CEO loves flaunting prestige) - Colleagues are smart & hard working, and most have good intentions - People frequent develop strong professional relationships through severely traumatic experiences (see: extremely aggressive deadlines set by non-technical leaders, surprise mandates for your weekends, general cross-team dysfunction) - The best lunch experience you can find at a tech company, seriously. But no dinner is offered. - You will climb the ladder fast if you excel at: getting buddy-buddy with upper leadership, following orders without objection, mastering the art of selling anything
Cons
- Software rarely works as expected. Core product is overly ambitious in scope given the small company size. New initiatives are expedited with blood and sweat, only to be abandoned months later due to lack of traction. Most software is kept afloat by hacky workarounds and late-night hotfixes. - Extreme skew in political power. We have the definition of a rigid hierarchy. Don't shake the boat, and do as you are told. The company is quite mature at 15 years old, so the culture has long been cemented and soured by now. This is the most soul-crushing reality of them all: you can not help those around you break their cycle of abuse, you can only watch. - At times it appears as if C3 was founded as a dollhouse for a billionaire to entertain himself with, as his prior company rapidly faded into obscurity. It's inception could be likened to Quibi's, where a self-assured elite with lofty ambitions undertakes a gargantuan project without worry for product-market fit.