Some perspectives of professional growth but very poor human environment
Pros
Working in the IT department, I had several opportunities to deal with non-trivial technologies thanks to the enthusiasm of few good technicians, who fought actively against the arrogant attitude toward IT widespread within the whole company.
Cons
No training/tutoring/career path at all, unless you are friend of, which was especially true for people coming from the secondary branch in Florence, who became tech leaders receiving huge endorsement, full support, plenty of charges and several assignments, with no apparent reason. No work organization at all, except for an ackward use of GANTT (Scrum? Waterfall? Kanban? Project ownership? Product management? All completely unknown terms within a company expecting the developer to be at the same time UX expert, front-end and back-end specialist, skilled in product definition, master of business logic, good communicator, etc. etc., obviously with no investment on his personal growth). Horrendous work environment, both for the logistics of the offices and because of the very poor average human level, due to most people coming from no other previous job experience and being focused only on their middle-class, narrow-minded conventional life. Management making decisions based on scam information, gossip, hearsay and friendships; overall negative approach highlighting little mistakes instead of appreciating big efforts and achievements (unless you are friend of, in which case you just have to blame someone else for your errors); divide-et-impera preventing any form of healthy collaboration between people (so, no pair programming, no code review, etc.), in favour of unfair competition on the other hand. Challenges, innovation, proactivity generally not welcome. No respect for privacy and personal life; people playing policemen, catching any chance to become bosses' trusted informers. Constant feeling of being observed: as a consequence, concrete risk of slipping into paranoia.