Pros
I can only talk in depth on the software engineering side of the business, but overall I'm incredibly positive about what we've been able to achieve and the journey we're on. While there are definitely challenges, from a day to day perspective where we are at is also miles above a lot of organizations I've been at. The core highlights for me are: - A modern tech stack ( Kubernetes, Dotnet, Angular, etc ) with a lot of empowerment at the engineer level to adopt technology. - Continuous and progressive delivery, with a tight feedback loop. - Engineering defined and lead initiatives to improve our overall software quality. - Well on the way to a proper 'Fully Shared Ops Responsibilities' team topology. - Excellent communication between the product owner roles and the engineering roles. - A genuinely interesting product to work on. - Constant learning. While this can be a con, it feels like as an organisation we're always pushing the boundaries of our collective knowledge and moving forward. As with all organizations, it's not all sunshine and roses. From a personal perspective though it's one of the few organizations I've worked at which has really been able to embrace the promise of a 'DevOps' culture, as opposed to it being a tick box exercise.
Cons
- The business focus can sometimes be spread a bit too thin, although it feels like this is being improved. - Due to the spread across multiple locations, cross area communication can be challenging. - Several significant organizational changes earlier in the year and still very much in the transitional period after that. - Shifting requirements. This is in part just the nature of being in a relatively young product segment, but it comes with certain challenges. - The local developer experience has had a hit over the last year with the adoption of a lot of new processes, but it is known and being improved. - Balancing of tech debt vs new features is tough, although this is a universal challenge in software engineering.