Pros
They are good at marketing themselves to new employees, likely because they lose so many people and are well practiced. They tout the "Best Place to Work" award but take a look at the actual article and you'll see it's only for the Washington D.C. metro area, excludes government jobs, which is by far the largest industry in D.C., and that they got beat by George Washington's Mount Vernon as a best place to work!
Cons
-People who have been around a while are either there to keep their visa, which management knows, or they are friends or family of management. New people are treated like pariahs and given little or no instructions, and then treated like they are incompetent. -The "Best Place to Work" thing should be taken with a grain of salt. They hide that the list only covers the D.C. metro area, only showing the more broad "Best Place to Work" badge. If you look at any other Top Workplace lists in D.C., nearly all of them are government positions. The Washington Post only counted non-government companies, which shrinks the survey size significantly in that area. REI also got beat by Capitol One (look at their Glassdoor ratings..) the corporate entity that owns Sweetwater Tavern and other chain restaurants, and George Washington's Mount Vernon! If the survey shows that more people would rather work at a tourist trap, answering the same inane questions and dealing with bored schoolkids on a field trip, that's telling... Also on the list is Deltek, which made BizJournal's list of WORST companies to work for. -HR is a joke. You'll get no response for looong stretches of time while you're interviewing and if you have issues with management, nothing will get done and you open yourself up for retaliation. Managers are horrible, manipulative and abusive. If you talk to a higher manager about issues you've had with your direct manager, you just end up with two managers who have it out for you. -No room for growth -Old outdated platforms and technologies -I have no way of definitively proving it, but positive reviews on Glassdoor sound like HR seeding high ratings. They all talk about a great work/life balance, but that's a lie. All neutral and negative reviews all highlight a horrible work/life balance and I constantly got calls and emails well past midnight. 40 hours is the bare minimum they expect you to work. They also seem to know that Glassdoor sorts by "popularity" by default, so they only comment on positive reviews or negative ones where nothing of substance is said.
