Pros
Great work/life balance, as the government contract is based on a 40-hour work week. Excellent healthcare plan, and free food is provided onsite. FU Associates doesn't have an HR department, so there is little bureaucracy. The work was pretty stable as long as the company kept winning contracts.
Cons
Unfortunately, FU Associates did not win the latest phase of what had been its major contract, and so a lot of employees had to be let go. And however laidback and egalitarian the company seems, the fact is that there are those who are in the inner circle and those who aren't. The inner circle people are forgiven mistakes that the rest of us would get yelled at for. Salary wasn't horrible but it wasn't great (it certainly didn't make up for getting yelled at) and once I learned the ropes on my projects, there was no opportunity to grow. If you could program, you were slotted as a developer, and you had to work with analysts who had no clue how the code worked.
