Pros
* The People – Without a doubt, the Nerdery is easily the most talented group of developers, designers and staff that it has ever been my pleasure to work with. * A Culture of Continuous Learning – The Nerdery culture places a high value on learning and sharing knowledge. This makes it a wonderful place to mature and refine your skills in development and design. * A Safe Space for Nerds – If you can name a branch of nerd-dom, it's represented at the Nerdery. Everyone is incredibly accepting of what other people are passionate about.
Cons
* Poor Diversity – The Nerdery's development staff is overwhelmingly white and male (myself included). I feel like women and minorities may not face overt hostility, but they are absolutely subjected to a ton of unconscious bias hassles. It's a problem without a simple solution, given the overall demographics of tech in general and Minnesota in particular, so I'm not calling the Nerdery out as being unusually bad, but I would like to see us be a bigger part of the solution. * Substandard Base Salary – The culture is great, particularly if you're a young professional trying to master your craft, but for older developers who aren't as jazzed about unlimited free Red Bull, the compensation package lags behind the competition in the Twin Cities. This tends to create a brain drain at the upper skill levels and has lead to jokes about the Nerdery being the farm team for local tech companies.