Pros
Itron is a gas, electric, water metering company moving into new cellular smart grid metering solutions. Itron stock investment for the long term (not short term) is improving as they are expected to have several years of increased business as utilities invest in cellular products that Itron parent company and its Cellular Solutions (San Mateo) now sell since its recent acquisition of Smartsynch cellular. Embedded cellular design and development is where the action and growth is inside Itron, there is demand for embedded engineers. I joined into a lower level position from an enterprise architect position from a former large company with the hope to work on cellular solutions and move into embedded solutions. Embedded cellular design and programming is a strong area opportunity with Itron Cellular Solutions (San Mateo). Management in non-software engineering are very good and the executive staff has a genuine leadership style.
Cons
Itron Cellular Solutions (San Mateo) is not the best place to work if you're interested in leading edge software development for Java engineers or Java architects; as the company already has heavy software investment in .NET energy management solutions that are mature energy components. Job ads may identify Java architects, but since I have 10+ years in architecture they failed to ask my skills in Java architecture, it appears to be just a label. The singular leading edge cellular software component the company has is handled by a very very small team and unlikely to add resources as system integration with the parent company has swallowed up those opportunities. Recent new engineering management has joined which has recently brought in issues such as micro management, lack of facilitative leadership, poor communication feedback loops, no pair programming resulting in poor team work execution, lack of real trust between management and software engineers, lack of appreciation. Some people are treated especially well if from Sonim Technologies.