Pros
Their San Mateo office building is located in the middle of a beautiful nature, which you'll often wish you could go to, in order to escape the dread inside the office (see Cons).
Cons
In my 20+ years in the field, Konica Minolta - San Mateo office - is the most corrupt environment I’ve ever seen. Most of the managers and engineers are dishonest. The will lie, cheat, and steal – literally! I’ve seen them steal software from an engineer, claim it as their own, then lie and say that engineer couldn’t do it. In this culture of corruption, backstabbing is very common. An engineer will try to make others look bad, in order to make himself look better. Actual skills don’t matter. The ones who do well with management are the ones who are good at kissing up. Another useful skill is the ability to cover up for mismanagement. Generally, upper management knows that employee is a liar, but if that employee is good at covering up for mismanagement, they’re deemed useful to have around. The managers have very little or no technical skills. Actual skills are not appreciated. Decisions are made based on office politics, not logic or reason. In fact, pointing out inefficiencies in policies or procedures, and suggesting improvements, could get you fired. Even if you shut up and play the game, you could still get scapegoated, if need be. And since these managers are so incompetent, there’s always need for scapegoating. There are no contractors, so being full-time won’t help you. Nobody’s safe. I’ve seen a bad manager reported to HR for misconduct several times, but nothing was done about it. In fact, HR covered for him. The corruption affects everybody. If you’re not part of it, you have to at least go along with it. You have to pay to play. There’s very high turn-around. If you look at the actual chart of all the projects and their schedules, you’ll see that nearly every project in every group is delivered late. But the reports to upper management are all rosy, and totally fictitious. When things are reported to the headquarters in Tokyo, it’s done in a small net conference, after hours, behind closed doors, and in Japanese. So, when you’re scapegoated, you don’t have any opportunity to defend yourself or even know the charges against you. And when the axe comes down, it happens fast and without warning. That employee is effectively censored, the manager can claim he took care of the problem, and that manager is actually rewarded. Even if management knows it would be wrong for that employee to be terminated, and even if they know it would ruin his personal life, that won’t stop them. For the ones who are amoral, they won’t have any qualms about it. For the ones who are morally weak, they’ll lie to themselves as they’re doing it, and those lies will be the story of that employee from then on. But generally, people won’t bring it up, for fear of retribution. In short, these are really nasty people. If you’re somehow able to work under these conditions, and you’re that desperate, then watch your back, keep your resume handy, and good luck!