Pros
It's been written here a dozen times: 1) the colleagues and friends at LL are what endures. At one point LL attracted industry-leading talent to work on the the virtual world revolution. Those people and the strong culture they created through 2007-2009 created an incredibly strong ex-Linden community that lasts to this day. 2) the small size of the company relative the the huge technical infrastructure, combined with relatively big budgets allowed for low level access and responsibility with powerful and complex systems.
Cons
Many negative glass door reviews can be dismissed as 'sour grapes' or some kind of failure that the reviewer is not living up to. I recognize that when I say: Linden Lab of 2011 really is an awful place to work. It didn't use to be like that. It really is the current CEO, CFO and their tragically bad leadership. Control of information, decimating company culture, inability to hear criticism, making decisions based on ego not based on known fact -- all traits that have seen the CEO roll out one failure after another in 2011. Internally, the company is dominated by the CFO who bullies people and uses his control of the purse strings to micromanage all aspects of the company. He has created a culture of fear, distrust and blame. After 8 years of no exit strategy, the board is checked out. They seem willing to buy anything that the CEO tells them and have given up on all accountability. Worse yet is that the CFO and CEO are recruiting friends into power positions who are not qualified to be in those positions or who thrive on the cabal. They lack the industry knowledge of online games, virtual worlds, or anything social, and worse yet have zero leadership skills to execute on anything. No one at the mid-management or line-level respects them. It's very dysfunctional. Linden Lab is a troubled organization, masked by the positive balance sheet and the blessed residents who pay and persist. By all measures of a company's internal health, LL is troubled: inability to retain talent, inability to innovate, release successful products that move financial or retention needs, and employee dissatisfaction as evident by the exodus of great people from LL in 2011 (two VP's, several Sr Directors, lots of top tech talent). Second Life could have innovated and stayed relevant but the lack of leadership in 2011 has buried the company. The real failure isn't about virtual worlds. It's the tragic, heart-wrenching failure in top management that has brought the Lab to where it is today. If you're looking to the future, go to a different company.
