Pros
First of all, for those who claims/thinks this is a start-up company, it's not; Yes this company is not a start up. This company doesn't have the pains of any start up company. They don't have a problems of money, product dead lines, success, pressure and this company doesn't have any thing that challenges a company or the employees. My experiences point by point
1. Timings: You will be told that this company doesn't have any strict timings, we have a free timing culture and this is a catch. If you come at 10 AM and leaves by 6 PM, then you are gone. Because in this culture, actual work starts at after 6 PM and on Friday evenings. When you are leaving (at 6 PM), people come and asks you why are you leaving. As a matter of fact, you will leave as there's nothing serious to work by extending the working hours. This leaves you some mental illness that makes you feel like you are not contributing anything to the product. After few days you realize that after six, people started playing carroms till 2AM - 3AM in the moring and claims themselves as the most hardworking people in the world and obviously you will be treated as inferiour to them. But there are some unforturate guys who are forced really to work hard (in fact they don't need to be)
2. Work satisfaction: I'm a typical software engineer who always wants to have more money by working less. (You can all me a less work ethic guy) Even for me at some point of time, I feel that I'm cheating the management (who's funding this company) by contributing something to nothing.
3. Respect: As I said in point 1, if you don't play carroms, pretend to be working after 6/over the weekend, you are gone. Whatever you did to the product, it's nothing. You will be treated as you don't know anything in the product. Whatever you do is simple, and other part is most complex thing that even Google can't undestand with the AI infra that they have. You will be insulted, mis judged at the end they make you feel that you are nothing and you don't even get a job out side if we throw you out. You will really be professionally sick.
4. Favourism: Few people in this company are gods. If they say YES, no matter what ever it is, it is YES. If not, they will make YES. They can take it to such extent they will chnage the meaning of YES. If you ever dare to say NO, that's it. You are screwed. You will be called for one:one to discuss the fuss that's being created by U. You will be treated like BUG in the company. The nice thing is they never fire you because it may spoil the culter and you will be forced to resign with some beautiful treatments. Hikes are Perks are decided based on the hard work that's done. (Am serious, please refer to 1). Your name will be pulled in a meeting and directions will be given to other people to prove you wrong. The amazing thing about this meeting is, this happens when you are not part of meeting.
5. Work station: Please believe me, lot work will be done on WhatsApp rather than Laptop. If you are a good responder on whatsApp, you will be part of God's team. Otherwise, you will be part of people who don't take initiative. Even if it's not your issue or not at all something related to you, you should atleast say "Ohhh", "I think ....", "Great" some kind of jorgons to be nice.
6. Work Culture: The working enviroment is something that can't be explained in words. One has to experience that. The problem is that, there is no mechanism that evaluates the product/work/process followed. Whatever you do is correct. When you try to say it's wrong, (If you dare to oppose God's team) please refer to point 4. By god's grace, if you implement a nice/complex feature, someone in God's team will refactor everything and take the credit of that feature saying that the performance has been improved. The performance gets improved in dev enviroment and decreased in production enviroment. Because there's a problem in production enviroment but not in the product code.
7. Meetings: Meetings are one interesting parts of the company. Team meetings are usually to discuss and decide but here it's other way around. First they will decide and discuss. And as pointed somewhere, they are always right. If you argue even if you have a point to argue, believe me it is next to impossible to convence them. Because, it's decided you can't change it.
It will be a never ending story. My laptop batter would be drained if I think of complete whole story. S
Cons
1. The management (the one which is funding this company) is really nice. People from that layer are very very good at heart. Few people who stay in this company only because of them.
2. The current CEO used to be bit crazy at times. But now he started behaving sensibly with Tech/Dev team. (i'm not so sure about other teams).
3. Few people from dev/QA/Functional teams are really good at heart.
4. The other supporting staff are nice.
5. Fun at work