Pros
1. Company has "unlimited PTO", which is good because you don't have to acrue PTO before using it. It is bad because you may not have ownership over a certain amount of days, so it may be hard to take off 3 straight weeks even though you have 15 days, for example, depending on your boss. Management is overall very understanding of taking time off, and I would say the average employee takes more time off here than most other firms, which is a plus. All time off is paid. 2. Very casual, familial culture. Some employees, especially the director and MD level employees seem to have been there a long time. I think this is a sign that people really do enjoy working there if there isn't turnover. 3. Paid continuing education classes if management approved of it. 4. Alot of after work fun events designed to allow employees to have fun and bond, even in the economic downturn.
Cons
1. No 401K match even in an uptick in the job environment. 2. Niche business, so transferability of skills is very weak at best, most exit opportunities are other patent-related businesses. If patents are what you love, this isn't a con. Business school is intriguing as the experience is very different than other business school applicants. There isn't much the company can do about this con as patents are their business. 3. We paid 20% of the healthcare costs pretax. 4. From my understanding, some of the business lines may pay below market rates. 5. There is some expectation that you work for other groups in times of downturn in your business line, which I disliked. Employees have their strength and weaknesses which make them bad fits for other business lines sometimes. We also don't get compensated based upon work for other lines, so incentives are not aligned there.
