A great place to start a career, but lacks a reason to stay
Pros
ECS is a great place to start a career. In a short period of time, you will have the opportunity to work on a wide variety of projects and wear a lot of different hats if you desire. Chances are you will love working with the people on your team, and due to the small team sizes you will always feel like your work is important to the success of the project. Even as a junior level employee, you will have an ability to influence the project's direction, and will have a higher level view of your projects than you would be able to get elsewhere. ECS makes some of the most impressive looking simulations in the business, so your projects will usually stand out from the rest. As long as you are proactive and make your career goals known, ECS will give you the opportunity and space to pursue them. If you decide to work here, know what you want to get out of it and make that known, and you will enjoy career opportunities that you would struggle to find elsewhere. For a simulation company, the culture is casual and friendly. You will enjoy a fair amount of flexibility with your schedule, and decent pay as long as you are joining as someone fresh out of college with little experience. If you have a question you want answered, management will speak to it as honestly and transparently as they can. In summary, ECS can be a great place to work as long as you are comfortable defining your own career path and setting your own goals. The people that work there are great, you will get a wide variety of experience in a short amount of time, and enjoy a decent amount of creative input no matter your role.
Cons
ECS continually fails to define a set career growth path for its lower level employees, despite employees stating the desire for such a system for years. If you are hired as a Junior Software Engineer, there is no criteria to meet or a defined path to take to move up into a mid-level position. The same can be said for your salary. At the same time, upper management will restructure and define new roles for themselves on a yearly basis depending on what trendy management book was circulated around the office that year. Additionally, benefits are diminishing each year. From 2016 to 2017, the per-paycheck cost for an employee to have healthcare coverage increased drastically, especially if you are on the PPO plan. That, combined with the cost of living and merit based wage increases being moved to April meant each employee was starting out the new year with a significant pay cut that they could only hope to make up for in April with what would usually be a slight raise. Flexibility is slowly decreasing as well. Where you used to be able to enjoy the ability to work a 32 hour week followed by a 48 hour week, if you had to suddenly miss a day for some reason, it was fine as long as your time cards in the two week period added up. Now that freedom only exists in the 40 hour work week unless you fill out a form and get approvals from managers. Flexibility options are being gradually gated behind unnecessary forms and process, while more restrictive non-compete agreements and other rigid policies are being tested and implemented. Finally, ECS is a company that prides itself on innovation, but seems to be unwilling to explore alternative revenue options in a time when the company is struggling to secure enough work to keep its Orlando office employed, instead continuing to chain itself to the abusive cycle of government contracting periods. This causes yearly cycles of layoffs that both prevent the company from retaining and building a consistent talent pool, and also creating morale problems that result in others choosing to leave the company.