Pros
Great people. From technicians to directors, everybody is friendly and approachable. However, YMMV. Had a great mentor on start of my SWE path. Systematic, precise and (what seems to be missing from the industry in general) humble. For someone practicing over 30+ years, it seems like a really rare quality to see. Although I got annoyed at various points of my stay there, the (relatively) systematic approach to SWE (partially) stuck with me and its a great trait to have.
Cons
The dev teams suggestions are rarely considered seriously. At least on my project, the work is largely directed from sales, up to the point where priorities change on weekly basis, if not daily. Eventually they will figure this stuff out I suppose, but this is frustrating as hell. I had exclusivelly feature/bugfix tasks for over a year. I hid all the refactoring stuff in this tasks. There is no time for anything else, even if that meant I had to spent 4h everytime I build a version. Pure madness. Also, the way communication is handled is horrible. One boss always (for lack of better wording) floods and dominates the conversation and it is nearly impossible for one to actually contribute something. One just gets told how the things are, despite said person not really grasping all of the underlying complexities. If one states the obvious, you easily get labelled as a 'negative perfectionist' person and youre out of the "inner trust yay-saying circle" that runs the shop. Seen that happen 4 times over my 5 year stay, last case being me. Also, hacking things together is the preferred way of doung things by the management. "Good enough" is practically inofficial motto. Things are not as bleak, the dev lead does his best and codebase does not always reflect that motto. The culture desperately needs to change.
