Pros
- CULTURE: as an employee I had a sense of ownership on whatever I was working on and was encouraged to ship and ship often. During the golden era product and engineering would work together to find ideal solutions. - Compensation: great benefits (while they lasted), competitive salary, fun company lunches. - Flexibility: unlimited PTO with a company who encouraged finding a work/life balance - Purpose: we helped students, teachers, and admins. - Ethics/transparency: "do you job"
Cons
Most cons are Dan Goldsmith era i.e. priming instructure for acquisition per board's instruction ThomaBravo: everything that was a pro, transformed into a con layoffs: I've never been laid off before, but by the time it was my turn it was very professional and was given a generous severance package given my time at INST. I did get laid off though, which is why this is a con ;) failed acquisition strategy to boost product offerings: we did not have a solid track record for integration other products into the larger canvas offerings. Most did not meet engineering muster. new products (studio, quizzes.next, gauge, canvas insights): the Product organization did not seem to have a clear goal as to what problems we were trying to solve with the new product offerings. Or if they did, the execution was poor. Making new products is difficult, especially ones that need to be at scale without being battle tested through organic growth.