Pros
Very flexible with schedule Yearly raises for good employees (often 10%) Family friendly Low turnover Pretty relaxed Good pay for inexperienced developers Good variety of technology (Depends on the team. Some are stuck with assembly language. Others do C#, JavaScript, etc.) Lots of mutual loyalty between employee and company
Cons
Family owned company leads to favoritism. In particular, there are some pretty toxic family members. Extremely haphazard development practices: It's either waterfall or "agile", which at DHI really means "fly by the seat of your pants". No defect tracking, no meaningful documentation, no requirements documents, etc. No good processes. Lots of strange old fashioned thinking (e.g. Pay stubs are paper and will always be paper.) Poor employees are rarely fired. Creativity is actively discouraged. A manager that is sympathetic is usually powerless. There's actually a PA system! It's like they never read "Peopleware"