Pros
I met some of the most talented and wonderful people while working at FWi. The work has the potential to be engrossing and satisfying. The product is actually somewhat interesting once you learn how to use it (not easy). People generally drink beer on Friday afternoons.
Cons
Four Winds Interactive has literally no career advancement opportunities to speak of. For my position specifically, they created a "Senior Sign Developer" position that had no change in responsibility or pay and simply existed to give the illusion of progression. Very low compensation. And even though the company is going into it's 9th year, they only recently started having "regular" compensation reviews. Not that these were worth anything, as everyone who went into their review left angry and disgruntled when they were told no raises were being given, that there wasn't enough to go around. This is in spite of the fact that whenever there was a company wide meeting, they would wax socratic about how well the company was doing and how much more money they were bringing in as compared to this time last year. Employees who had been with the company since day one had told me personally that they had never once received a raise during their tenure there, not even a cost of living adjustment. The atmosphere of the company is, "you're lucky to work here, you take what we give you, and it isn't going to be much." It was a rare occurrence that I was not working nights and weekends in a given week. This was mainly due to serious under staffing in my department, coupled with unrealistic timelines being promised to clients throughout the entire sales cycle. If you work in any other department other than sales you are essentially a peasant. Communication between departments is non-existent except to point fingers when something goes wrong. The parking situation is deplorable. The office is entirely too small for how many people they employ. They are loathe to move because they got a great deal on rent, but there are multiple people who literally do not have desks and are forced to wander. Blaming others for things out of their control and backstabbing was common practice.
