Pros
As a former network engineer at a much larger corporation in Silicon Valley, I am extremely happy to be working at Milestone and never want to go back to the corporate giant. I get paid more to do a more reasonable workload (40 hours worth of work a week instead of 55-60), and actually get recognized when a job is well done. I look forward to continuing on with Milestone for at least a few years. The CEO may be a one-percenter (as in the Occupy Wall Street) but he is a nice guy who wears t-shirts and baseball caps to the office and knows me by name and says hello when we pass by each other. I'm not sure why other people have beef with Prem; he is the owner and founder of the company, so he can micromanage it however he wants, but I don't observe him doing that. He has never asked me to do anything, so all of my work comes from my direct manager or my project manager. One of Milestone's major functions is recruiting people as contractors for its major clients, so I can't speak to that piece as I work at HQ.
Cons
The office isn't as nice as a multi-billion dollar company, the benefits aren't as cushy either (no stock options or 401k matching), but the higher salary and job satisfaction make up for that. There does also seem to be a disconnect between management and the "regular people"; not in a negative way, but just in a I-didn't-know-that-because-no-one-told-me-until-just-this-very-moment way. In other words, sometimes conversations and decisions get made at the executive level that don't always get communicated down the ladder. Some employees in non-technical roles complain about low compensation, but as an engineer, I feel like I am compensated adequately considering my certifications and experience level.