Pros
Decent compensation package with competitive benefits. For those not working in the technical side of the business (R&D), Open Solutions may provide a good opportunity for networking with other companies or non-technical individuals
Cons
The R&D department is run by individuals with very little to no interest (or knowledge) of how a software development organization should be run. If you are in the technology space in general and software development in particular, R&D at Open is NOT the place to grow professionally or advance your career! Everything you know as good industry practice or common business sense will not be applied. Instead, you will be asked to follow practices that the software development industry has abandoned decades ago. For instance, you will be forking code when there is no need to do so, but is done because someone in management said so; you will follow a development process that they call Agile, yet it doesn’t have anything agile about it. If you question these practices, you will be able to trace them back to the 2 or 3 individuals in charge of R&D: one is running the department by surfing the web and Google rather than by knowledge, experience and competence; another one believes that if you read Head First Software Development then that is all there is to know; the third one will make release engineering and scheduling decisions based on side notes in Project Management for Dummies. Within a few months working for R&D you will realize you made the wrong career decision and are learning what NOT to do in your next job. Last, the longer you work with these individuals the faster your sharp and polished professional skills will deteriorate. In short, stay away unless all you want is just a paycheck.
