Pros
Bullet points for the TL;DR crowd: * Very competitive pay * Excellent benefits * Exceptional culture; casual dress (like shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops in the summer) every day, a cafeteria with several old-school video games, a ping-pong table and a fooseball table, free fresh fruit, vitamin water, SoBe and soda, once a month there's an all-hands meeting followed by company-sponsored SERIOUS partying... * The people. The people are the substance of the culture, and they're amazing. I've always felt like "the rockstar" almost everywhere I've worked. Here, I feel average at best... and it's AWESOME. Everyone is great at what they do, and not just willing but eager to help each other out. Everyone is HIGHLY dedicated. No slackers allowed, though; you'll be expected to be all these things as well. * The product. It's best-in-class, and challenging as hell to work on... which is a *good* thing, if you consider yourself to be a top-notch IT person. * Guiding principles * VERY feedback-driven; they seek out feedback in every possible way, and make very real changes based on it * Leadership... the CEO of this company is truly inspirational, while at the same time remaining completely accessible and "real". * Rapid growth... the arrow is pointed straight up, here. Now, a bit of backstory for those that are interested... I've worked in IT for 25 years. Granted, a lot of that was contracting, so I wasn't getting the "permanent feel" for the places I worked at... but at the same time, I got an up-close look at what it was like to be an employee, and nobody ever seemed particularly happy with their jobs. No big deal for me, I'd just move on to the next contract. But contracting got old, and I wanted to find a permanent home to grow with. I tried several permanent positions, and I started to wonder if maybe just being happy with doing what I do had to be enough; that I couldn't hope for more than one (maybe two) of good salary, good people to work with, challenging, interesting work with cutting-edge technologies, good benefits, good leadership, and good company direction. I wasn't even job-hunting at the time, I was trying to force myself to stick it out with my current permanent position because I didn't want to be a "job-hopper" any more. I answered the phone on accident, because my policy is to let all numbers I don't know go to voicemail. I was convinced to at least look into kCura on the web, and watch some of the videos the have on YouTube. After that, I was hooked. It was the first interview I'd been on in years where I truly cared about the outcome... and it was also the first interview I actually *enjoyed*. I could tell they cared more about how I thought and problem-solved and what *I* was looking for in a job than if I knew obscure syntactical specifics (that I could look up in a heartbeat with F1 or Google) or "where I saw myself in 10 years". I instantly liked everyone I interviewed with. Getting a job here is literally the best thing that's happened to me, professionally speaking. This is where I originally started bullet-pointing, but I moved it to the top. Bottom line: I look forward to coming to work every day. Even when the work occasionally gets overwhelming, or drags during regression testing... the worst day here is about as good as the best day at most of my other jobs, because of the people I work with.
Cons
TL;DR: * Fast pace * Rapid growth * Work/life balance Those three things are all very closely inter-related, of course... and also, they're only cons if they're things you don't like. I happen to like a fast pace, and the challenges associated with rapid growth. Occasionally, the stress can get high and the hours long. However, I think that, for whatever reason, this is to some degree inescapable and inherent to software development, especially when the software in question is the company's lifeblood and thousands of customers depend upon it. But the bottom line here is, if you're an intractable 9-to-5-er and balk at having to work extra-hard from time to time, this is not the place for you. And yes, rapid growth is a pro, but it has some con side effects. If you've not dealt with rapid growth before, it can be disorienting. Policies and procedures have to change (and not in small ways) on occasion to accommodate the different phases of corporate maturation and employee headcount. However, I will say that they are being VERY pro-active and forward thinking by hiring new C-level and upper management that has already been through the exact phases that are in front of us. You have to like an exciting, fast pace, you have to want to constantly learn (and learn a LOT, mostly about the product itself and its codebase), and you have to be willing to step up and put in some extra work at times. You have to be comfortable with feeling overwhelmed for about a solid year. This is simply not a company for the timid or unmotivated. It's still a bit too small for a variance of opportunity at the mid-career level; the possibility of moving from being hands-on to a more managerial track seems limited and ill-defined. If I cared much about that, it's the one thing that would tempt me to move. But I'm in this for the long haul; the long-term vision at kCura overshadows everything else, for me.
