Pros
Close to Grand Central, you get to work in a historical brownstone.
Cons
Company culture – is pretty boring compared to other companies. This privately owned business has very few team building events. They talk of the “good old days” when they used to party on the rooftop. In my time there, they were barely able to get one event off the ground. Your one event will be the company holiday party where you eat family style and pray you get a decent person to sit next to. Don’t worry about getting drunk and making a scene, it’s not going to come even close. The work – on the technical side of things you will be expected to wear many hats and you will be expected to learn it all yourself. While some of the seniors get to take courses and classes you will be lucky if they renew the cbtnuggets subscription. Expect to support aging technology because the “sql guy” can’t be bothered to update his code. Expect to prove that in fact it’s the code causing performance issues and not the brand new SSD san you just bought to speed up the sloppy code. Management – expect management to look after each other and not reward you for the long nights you put in. although this might be true everywhere, I never saw it as distinctly as I did at Kipany. If you are on the IT side of the house, expect the boss to sit in his penthouse throne and not lift a finger to help as the staff fights over who has the authority over a project. Don’t expect any vision or roadmap from the boss, he is there for life and is not about to mess it up by offering any risky path forward. Don’t not expect the boss to mentor you, unless you call his stories during the morning coffee breaks, “life lessons”. Growth – This company is undergoing major re-tuning. They’ve gone from having a major partner to having to scramble to return to their production roots. They went through a round of layoffs so expect to fight for every dollar when you interview and your reviews, you will not win that argument but keep your dignity and try anyway.