Pros
Great people, mission-driven org, important work. By far the most empathetic people I've worked with, who are generally at Ad Hoc despite being able to make more money elsewhere because they believe in the work being done. The focus on capacity-building in government is great. Engineering culture brings modern practices into legacy places, design and research are actually teaching government agencies how to do user research, showing the value of product thinking over scrum process changes clients. Greg is an authentic leader whose optimism and emotion permeate the company. His energy is so much of what makes Ad Hoc the place it is.
Cons
The realities of being a growing government contractor are tough: Ad Hoc long ago left the small-business kiddie pool and hasn't gotten on their feet as a large business. Trying to compete against the bigs keeps squeezing the company's margins in ways that have led to a steady erosion of benefits and culture, not to mention uncertainty in the future of many of Ad Hoc's flagship projects. Because of this squeeze, there's little to no time left for anything outside billable work: no culture-building, knowledge-sharing, building relationships, investing in shared solutions or building internal tools. Benefits that were pretty good when I joined have steadily been declining: continuing ed funds were cut, "unlimited PTO" became "use what you need" became "we're not counting, but if you take more than three weeks we're gonna have a problem", healthcare has declined from "pretty good" to "mediocre and expensive". If you compare to the other DSC companies (peer/competitor companies), Ad Hoc now has some of the worst benefits. I hope the company's able to get through this rough period and land on their feet, but I'm not sure how they get there.
