Genuine Personal Company with Flaws
Pros
Flexible Schedule Outstanding work/life balance Excellent hiring standards and quality of people Still personal concern for employees (changing, unfortunately) Ability to relocate to at least 4 diverse areas of the country. Latitude to do our jobs "right" and learn while we do it. Flexibility, open office, and culture let employees help and lean on each other. Benefits are good and management is aggressive in keeping them affordable. Management responsive to concerns.
Cons
Management often TOO responsive - problem is generally put on employees. Deterioration of concern for employees lately, probably because of new "big company" HR [liability]. Compensation: Well under median pay (10% or more under). Raises well under industry average. Bonuses highly variable, all except one of mine has been under 0.5%. Direction: Management indecisive and unfocused. Career path and training: First-line Management can't direct career path for individual employees -- there is micromanagement and consensus from "the top" for this -- that is, if you are not a 'blessed' employee, you are not getting opportunity. This cliquishness runs from "the top" down. Work load: Generally boring work load (except clique). There is not much to do about this, we work legacy systems here. Lack of hiring focus: The company stresses skill sets like it's competing with Google for top software design talent while the true ideal employee based on the work is a motivated EE/CS double major with experience in QA or Process Engineering.
