Pros
- Great people and great culture - Company goes out of its way to treat employees - Flexibility in schedule when life events come up - Paid paternity leave, amount of PTO is above industry standard - Benefits are ridiculously good - Casual dress - Autonomy as a developer(with product owner approval) I overall really enjoyed my time at IPeople. The company has a great vibe to it and everyone is friendly. I got the vibe that most people were there because they really enjoyed the company. One of the things I liked is that developers have a lot of autonomy in shaping the product, if you have and idea, you can take it to the product owner and if they agree, you can code it into the product. The company regularly stocks the kitchen with snacks, sodas, fresh fruit, etc. They also have pizza on most Wednesdays. This was a huge perk and a sign that the company wanted to go above and beyond to keep employees happy. The company is very flexible and understanding when family events come up, they will work with you and give you time off as needed for doctors appointments, etc. They are pretty much the only company that offers paid paternity leave in addition to your already given PTO, this is a big deal. My son was born during my time a IPeople and the company was really accommodating about me taking time off and happily welcomed me back. The amount of time off with this company is great. You get your standard couple weeks off, then on top of that the company pays employees to take time off during Thanksgiving and Christmas. They did change this for 2016 to make it so you chose either holiday instead of both but this was actually one of the major things that made me accept my offer. Dress is casual, you'll see most people wearing jeans, shorts, flip flops, etc.... pretty much anything goes. Advice to those considering Interface People: If you're on the fence and here because your are considering interviewing or joining IPeople, do it. Its a great company, it does have flaws but I've overall liked working here.
Cons
- Leadership sometimes feels disorganized - At times it feels like we ship software without proper QA - The normal downsides of working for a small company(wearing many hats, etc.) One of the things I struggled with was the fact that there wasn't a barrier between leaderships decision making and the development teams. Some people like this but it took away from development time. Leadership would include developers into decision making meetings where it felt like they already had their mind made up. The better solution would be that leadership makes these decisions and then relays that through the product owner, scrum masters, etc. Developers should only be included in meetings where they are a technical resource, not business decision meetings. Some people may actually like that they are part of the day to day business but I just wanted to code. I wish we had a legit QA person. Some teams had a QA person but they also had other duties. Our team unfortunately did not have a QA person, the expectation is that developers QA their own stuff before committing and unit tests were being written.... which is true, we did that but a dedicated QA would catch so many things that we just don't think to try.