Frankly, this was the *worst* job experience of my career.
I was promised a great atmosphere of collaboration and enjoyable culture and offered a great salary and other positive-sounding benefits. They sounded truly excited about me starting my job there, which had me excited.
However, that excitement fell completely flat from the moment I started. I was given no guidance whatsoever into the culture or the (proprietary) software, left with no notion of onboarding, nor an atmosphere of humility where folks are allowed to ask questions. I was given a rudimentary set of directions and then basically left to figure it all out on my own. That might be fine for a 1-year-old company of 5 people, but for a company 10 years old, that is completely unacceptable. I was made to feel less than simply for the fact that I didn't walk in the front door already knowing exactly how their software worked.
Communication was abominable! I could not get a straight answer as to what was expected of me in my role as compared to some of the other roles I would work alongside. It was months before I even got a one-on-one with my manager, and he was unavailable any time I needed to talk to him. It didn't help that there was also constant churn, with some people leaving of their own will and others being told to leave.
Against my better judgment, I took the job knowing that hardly anyone had been there more than 2 years due to another layoff that happened in that time frame. Little did I know that it would come to pass once again. Don't trust what they say about "great things for the future" because that "great future" will likely come at the expense of your job there. However, that might spare you from continuing on in misery.
Oh, and those great benefits? It sounds good to have no employee cost for healthcare, right? Well, consider the fact that there's conversely no 401K matching. In my experience, the cost to the company (and benefit to you) balances out, so you're not really gaining anything over paying for healthcare and getting a 401K match. Also, those stock options aren't worth anything if they let you go before the stocks vest.
