Pros
- Good colleagues. There are still a few good engineers not yet left, who are both nice and know what they are doing. - Positive cash flow. Your paycheck won't likely bounce, yet. - Team building events and snacks. - Simply outsmart thousands of hi-tech companies. By keeping CTO office empty for 4 years while appointing Hardware VP Engineer to lead company technical vision, culture, and roadmap, A10 can easily save millions dollars a year. - Brilliant future. Load balancing software written 2 decades ago still runs, after rounds of hacks, patches, and repurposed for ADC, Cloud, DDoS, TPS, Virtualization, .. etc., and now, of course, AI. - College graduate could learn how things could be done while seasoned ones can learn what shouldn't be.
Cons
- Every open window, CEO kept selling his stocks, million dollars a year. - Original software architect and key engineers left. - Senior management acted like Mr. Know-It-All despite of being out of touch with day-to-day engineering for decades. They couldn't even tell who's bluffing and who really knows, and they didn't care either. - A good ol' boys club, boomeranging is your privilege if you got club membership. They will save a spot for you even though you don't possess needed skill set for leading a new group when you are back. If not a crony, don't worry. Try being a brown noser instead. Just suck up to top management and you will be fine. - Run by bean counters whose sole priority is a book that looks good. So, be warned if your pay wasn't way below market or you will find yourself on the list HR compiled, each year. Once listed, expect non-stop picking on and belittling until you gave up the package. When they threw you under the bus and replaced you with younger and cheaper ones, never mind what contribution you had done. Don't be surprised either if you got your pink slip days before Christmas or a termination phone call on your vacation. - Laughable processes and training. It's not unusual marketing blamed for "not yet supported" features which had been delivered and documented 2 years back, or not functioning features on products already shipped for 3 years.