Pros
TaxSlayer has a lot of potential. It was growing fast, and it weathered (is weathering?) the Covid-19 pandemic just fine. It will work as a starting point for a career in IT or software engineering. The company provides bonuses as well as the option of a company trip and other ancillary fringe benefits. Taking the company trip is a great option to really get into the company culture and get to know everyone outside of work. The PTO provided is good, but it's not great (it's never great in the US). Management is very understanding of time off needed for family, etc. The medical benefits and retirement are also good, but they're not great. You'll have decent coverage, but the company flips providers often and you may see issues having deductibles honored by the next company. The software engineering team, QA included of course, are a great bunch of guys and gals. Working together with them was a very positive experience, and I hated having to part ways. The CTO and leadership of the software team is also solid, but of course their hands are often tied by having to make the business side happy. I think they do a great job with the hand they've been dealt.
Cons
The biggest con of TaxSlayer is the mirror image of its greatest pro: they consider themselves a "family company" and certainly are understanding when it comes to family. However, that's also code for the company being run like it's still the 1980s. There is a permeable sense of absolute loyalty being required and demanded at the company, and if you make any indication that you are no longer loyal to them, or even if THEY do something that makes THEM think you will no longer be loyal to them, then you will essentially find yourself on a you-know-what-list and subsequently might as well go elsewhere regardless of your actual feelings on the matter. Don't bother bringing up "your career" at all. Just do all of your own homework, and if you find that it's in the best interest of your career to move on, then move on. Like I said, this company has an old-school mentality. They either have no intention of keeping top talent, they hope their top talent doesn't recognize how valuable they'd be somewhere else, or they just don't care. Don't bother giving constructive feedback to anyone. That's a quick way to get on the bad side of the higher ups. Always stay positive! Yay! Just be a worker bee and collect your paycheck. They claim they want you to be "bold" but that's just internal propaganda. In fact, there were times that a constructive Glassdoor review came in from someone (claiming to be) still at the company. When this happened once in particular, we were all suddenly brought into a "who done it" sort of meeting. I was thinking to myself, "wow, what a great way to build morale: accuse literally everyone of something they didn't do while simultaneously making everyone curious enough to immediately go and read the review after the meeting." If you are a software engineer, do yourself a favor and ask for A LOT more than whatever their initial offer is. If they ask what you are currently making, don't tell them. They will make every attempt to lowball you and you will never get paid what you deserve for the work you put in. That probably goes for other positions as well, but a good software engineer of course has more leverage. Just be aware that even if you are fresh out of college, talented software engineers are RARE and TaxSlayer is unwisely limiting themselves by not hiring remote software engineers even post-Covid (as of the time I departed), so you have a lot more leverage than you realize if you are a talented engineer willing to work in the Augusta area. The possibility of being underpaid is especially apparent if you are (were) initially hired as a "state developer", and you end(ed) up promoted to a software developer position. They may give you a big bump relative to what you WERE making, but you should seriously take stock in what you COULD BE making. This particular circumstance has the highest chance of leading to a long-term period of being underpaid, and the leadership is counting on it. Don't believe anything this company says about being innovative. The only thing they care about is the product lines their business side thinks of. While I was there, attempts were made to organize an "innovation time" to foster ideas, but complaints from the business side put a quick stop to that. This will eventually catch up to them unless they see the light, but we all know how often that actually happens.