Leadership Vacuum
Pros
It is a small company, so there is a lot of responsibility on each person. As a design engineer, I was responsible for the design, development, and testing of new products and improvement and troubleshooting of mature products. Additionally, I was responsible for working with the assemblers to improve the manufacturing process with a focus on Lean manufacturing.
Cons
I was given no managerial support. The heads of operations and engineering often spent more time blaming each other and each other's subordinates, than trying to improve the products and company. There was an incredibly limited budget that meant we were unable to do very much prototyping or testing. We launched new products without field trial and huge known customer problems. Our sales team would often bundle our products with competitor products in order to make commissions.