A good jumping off position, not long term
Pros
Decent culture with a team that is a modest subset of the most creative people in the Albuquerque metro area. I once ran into someone who described Ideum as a "mickey mouse club" of creatives and I've also met people who moved on to do larger things who appreciated their time there. Everyone is nice. It's pretty quiet despite an open-office setting. Pay is okay, especially for someone just starting out but likely not good long term. Though I have seen people leave to work at one of the big defense firms and then come back to work at Ideum again, I expect they were paid more than me.
Cons
Projects turn over every six to nine months and so there is no longevity to projects. I feel like I don't really have any work to show off for this period of my career because it literally doesn't exist anymore except for in the wayback machine. Project deadlines creep up fast and a feeling of constant grind tends to be a byproduct of this. This affected my overall wellbeing with severe bruxism that took a few years to kick. Last minute requests from clients are not pushed back on enough. High turnover. 2 years was pretty average for most people, usually a little less. No unified tech stack. Technologies vary wildly, it's good to wear many hats here unfortunately other company do not value that the same way. Under-powered hardware can be a problem when trying to develop cutting-edge interaction-driven applications.
