Pros
- Standard tech company benefits like company is off 2 weeks over Christmas/New Year holidays, unlimited PTO, fully covered healthcare, but they did take away the 401k benefit right after I started - Important mission-oriented work that's really making a difference in DoD - Easy to get access to the tools and resources you need to thrive in your job
Cons
- Rampant nepotism & negative culture: there's nothing wrong with hiring a family member, but the problem with Defense Unicorns is they've created a very political culture where if you're not "in" with the family members related to the founders or the personal friends of the founders, you're not considered high-value and are more likely to be micromanaged. There's definitely a "Mean Girls" culture here where to a certain degree it doesn't matter how good your work is if you're not friends with the right people or if you rubbed the wrong person the wrong way. There are some good people who you can learn from, but others are very rigid about learning and mistakes — i.e., there's definitely a culture of fear around making mistakes if you're new. Some people here will judge you very harshly without giving you time to learn or ramp up, which significantly affects morale on certain teams. The engineers tend to think they know everything, and if you're on a non-engineering team, God help you if you get something wrong, they will treat you like you don't belong at the company for not knowing everything about software development. - No work/life balance: Job expectations and duties can change overnight due to the political atmosphere, leading to a pressure to be on all the time to catch changes and updates as they're happening. I often received "everything is on fire" messages late at night, very early in the morning, or even on weekends. This is expected to some degree when you have people spread out coast-to-coast, but many of the "fire" issues were due to mismanagement. - Gross mismanagement: There are people in leadership positions here who have no idea what they're doing and are threatened by talent in the ranks. Right after I joined they went from crowing about what a good place the company was in business-wise and financially, to stripping away benefits and laying people off. People in executive leadership and business development do not know how to sell to DoD and have admitted as much, which presents concerns for the long-term health of the company. It's definitely possible to do "too good" of a job here to the point where your boss or your boss's boss try to find ways to micromanage you for fear of you "upstaging" them. - Personalities run amok: if you're "in" with leadership or the good ol' boys club, you can do whatever you want. The abuse I saw here from certain leaders on certain teams was breathtakingly toxic and would never be allowed at bigger, more established companies. Some teams suffered for months before HR was forced to get involved, and even then, people weren't fired for what would be fireable offenses at any other company. - Bad financial condition: ultimately executive leadership doesn't know how to do math. The picture they painted of the financial situation changed day to day. They went on a hiring spree, then took away benefits, then did layoffs, then did another 25% layoff and are now trying to hire again, all in the space of 9 months. Not only is this a psychologically unsafe place to work, it's also a financially dangerous place to work.