Pros
The Chicago technology team has developed a collaborative, enjoyable culture that makes you want to go the extra mile for your teammates. I have never been anywhere that allows the development team such freedom to build software to the best of your abilities and gives the team control over the agile processes we follow to provide valuable software in the most efficient way possible. Management and our Product team work very closely with us to make sure we understand the business value of the projects we are working on, but step back and trust the development team to execute without any micromanagement whatsoever. In the last year, we've been able to deploy production software using new technologies such as Scala, Play framework, Akka, and Redis among others. We use test driven development to ensure high quality with the full support of management to follow good programming practices.
Cons
The commute is a little tough for me but most people really like the office location near Union Station and Oglive.