Pros
Technical work can be very rewarding - depending on the project. It's exciting to see your work in action on the test rigs and chiller systems. Good work-life balance. Managers and co-workers allow flexibility and generally are very respectful of your personal time and personal commitments. Friendly atmosphere. Plenty of friendly and amicable co-workers. Cross-collaboration between teams can be great, most of the time. Company showed good business growth and expansion plans. I especially like the climate-conscious business mindset. Benefits and pay are among the best you can get in the Florida Panhandle area. Pre-covid the company had fun picnics, holiday parties and all-hands events every year. The company has good employee-only perks such as tie-ups with some local businesses and restaurants that get you an employee-only discount upon showing your badge, tickets to adventure parks, employee assistance programs and instituted a parental leave benefit in 2020. Cost of living in Tallahassee is low, certainly good for long-term savings. It helps that Florida is an income tax-free state.
Cons
Tallahassee, FL is a very small, isolated town. Poorly connected to any major city - the time you save checking-in at the airport, you lose thrice over in transit to connecting flights. Virtually no other engineering industry presence around here. Can cause a lot of technical stagnation, lack of local talent. It can get really lonely living here once everyone around you in this college-town has graduated. Adaptation to new industry practices and standards is very slow and infrequent. Project roll-outs move along at a snail's pace. Takes many months to get a medium-sized project out and takes years to roll out major undertakings. Program management is haphazard. No sync between PMs and engineers. PMs should be up-to-speed with the bigger picture of technological architecture. Strong technical leadership is missing. All too much general-architecture work is placed on individual contributors with the rest of the team loosely reviewing. Technical leads have been known, in my experience, to lack knowledge of very fundamental technical protocols, and display a remarkable unwillingness to learn. Leads must understand that their role involves more than implementation. No way to escalate concerns. Skip-levels have little-to-nothing to do with indirect reports. It is poor culture not to have a quarterly or at lease semi-annual 1:1 with indirect reports to get their perspective of your directs. Also it is poor leadership not to personally assess ICs 2 levels below you and get only their direct manager's feedback as their review. Code and process quality standards are in place but not meticulously followed-up on. Some people are too comfortable discussing and even imposing sensitive religious and political views upon others, which would ordinarily be censored in a workplace.