Pros
Culture: - great coworkers - you will get to work with some of the most intelligent and hardworking people. I was constantly amazed by the dedication of the people I worked with who would answer emails at all hours of the night, work all weekend to fix a piece of functionality, or miss their kids school functions in order to spend time on the phone with a needy client. Most employees seriously care about doing a good job. Benefits: - remote work allowed me to work from anywhere, as long as I had my computer and was constantly able to be online/on the phone. Pace/Challenge: - large-scale strategic projects with tight deadlines mean 'boredom' is a word you will never know. - if you are good at what you do, there's unlimited opportunity to thrive and help the company grow!
Cons
Culture: - very high turnover. I regret not doing more research through LinkedIn prior to joining, to see just how many people leave the company in 2 years or less. High-level leadership changes also contributed to confusion and instability. The constant churn made project consistency difficult and there was always a scramble to understand what someone else had previously promised a client. During my interview process, someone made a comment that the person hired before me lasted less than 3 months, and at the time I thought that was a crazy anomaly but I now understand. Within a few months of my start date, 3 of the 4 people who interviewed me were gone from the company. - lack of maturity in leadership. An executive once shouted in the middle of a budget review that all of us should consider quitting our jobs because we were clearly terrible at what we did. It was a moment of exasperation and I'm certain he regretted it (he later apologized) but it was also the moment where I made up my mind to eventually leave because he couldn't see that the process was broken, not the people. - poor change management/communication. (Example: twice I discovered that my boss was no longer my boss by stumbling upon the information in the HR system instead of actually being informed about the change. Then I had to go to the person and say "Hey, I saw that I don't report to you anymore. What's that about?" V awkward.) Benefits: - no 401 - no negotiation on vacation time Pace/Challenge: - frequent disparities in estimates sold to a customer vs what could be delivered. Lack of accountability in the right areas, with blame and finger pointing when issues undoubtedly arose, and a lot of frustrated clients. This meant that teams were constantly scrambling to get work done on time and budget. While I often heard people acknowledge this fact and make mention of improving the situation, the statement was always "we'll fix things once we get over this current hurdle" and the hurdles didn't seem to end, so the improvements were always far off.
