Pros
For a Computer Science student working part-time, CleanTelligent is great. They offer higher pay than most student jobs, and real work experience. Some bullet points: - Work schedules are flexible; they're built around your class schedule. - There's opportunities for mobile app development, if you're interested. - The working environment is friendly and relaxed. - Co-workers are fun to work alongside, and will teach and learn from one another. - Tasks and bugs are tracked. - There's a clear development, testing, and release process. - There are good non-programmer testers. - There are automated Test builds every 2 hours, and a build can be manually initiated with one human step. - Production builds are deployed on a 2-week cycle. - Every employee (not just programmers) has two monitors for their desktop computer. - Programmers have powerful, fast computers. - Interviewees write and debug code during their interview. - Git is used for version control on the source code.
Cons
Once you're no longer a student, there is no upward mobility. You either start working full time doing the same job, or leave the company for greener pastures. Most developers choose the latter option when they graduate. As a result, there's a high rate of developer turnover. The only product of CleanBrain is CleanTelligent, a single web-based software package. It's been developed on for over ten years, and it shows. The code has a wide variety of styles in it. It uses outdated patterns and anti-patterns (such as "Stringly-Typed" data - using a String when another data type is more appropriate). CleanBrain is headed by a former Building Service Contractor, rather than a software guy, so decisions about the software's development aren't always the best. Getting approval to refactor is like pulling teeth, and getting approval to remove an unused or irredeemably-broken feature is impossible. The company's most experienced programmer is the manager, which means he hardly ever gets to program. If he's not in a meeting, he's putting out one fire or another, and his most valuable skills are going to waste. I would recommend CleanBrain to a student, but not to a graduated, junior-level developer. Any good programmer further along than "Student" can get a job with better pay and benefits.