Pros
Upper management was too busy getting reamed out by the CEO to monitor what time you clocked in and out, so we would come in at 11 and leave at 4:30 pretty regularly. Plus, there were so many smart, talented people (among many duds, though).
Cons
I watched as my bright co-workers get deflated to the core because their opinions and insights were repeatedly ignored and their talents were undermined. Some of us even had "talking tos" because we tried to offer concrete solutions to problems. This is all because the CEO is an egomaniacal narcissist who had more hubris than experience in the media and tech industry. He and his co-founder squandered not only human capital but $25 million in investment funding, mismanaging the funds without creating additional revenue streams. Instead, they explored his every whim and fancy at the cost of dozens of employees and their livelihoods. Last month, about 75% of the company was laid off. The CEO is a Trump supporter (though he will deny this fact) who decided to try his hand at creating a "diverse" "media" company providing a platform for all millennial perspectives, staffed at the exec level by his college friends and frat buddies. Gee, I wonder why it's failing. To give you a sense of their incompetence, the website did not have a site map for more than a year after its launch. Another example? The company invested (probably) millions and countless hours into launching a video platform that completely fizzled because they put someone in charge of it who was even more delusional and less experienced than the CEO. In fact, none of the editorial directors, with the exception of maybe one, deserved their titles and their lack of experience helped to drive the company into the ground. One more? A week after a first round of layoffs, during which about 20 employees were let go, the company "made up" for the low morale by introducing spirit weeks, which encouraged employees to wear weird t-shirts or dress like a certain decade. In other words, instead of owning up to their mistakes and fixing them, they used distraction tactics to make employees complacent (many of them were right out of college so they lapped it up). Upper management also used a disturbingly manipulative culture code to keep their staff in line. Think "Disrupted" by Dan Lyons except at a far less successful company.