Pros
Once in a life time opportunity to be part of a winning team and shape the future of autonomy.
Major pros are the interesting market, exceptional team, and professional growth opportunities.
Market
Autonomy is an exciting technical problem space and your work has many positive real world implications. From an engineering perspective, technical challenges can range from machine learning for perception, computer graphics for simulation, infrastructure, advanced front end visualization, and data science for validating system safety, etc. From an impact perspective, your work directly contributes to safe development and testing for customers from all of the world with use-cases ranging from commercial vehicles (GM, Toyota, Nissan, VW, etc), to mining & construction, mobile robots, robo taxis, trucks, agriculture, etc. Considering how autonomy has the ability to create safer and cheaper ways of moving people and things, the real world impact of the work is high.
Things will only be more autonomous in the future, so Applied is a great bet to make that future a reality
Exceptional Team
I've been part of many winning teams and respected institutions throughout my career / life and I can say hands down, the team at Applied is the best. Everyone on the team has a history of succeeding in the things they commit themselves to, yet everyone is still modest and has a strong willingness to learn from others and do their best work.
Professional growth opportunities:
Team is presented with unique access to leadership training programs, opportunities to work and live in other offices (Ann Arbor, Munich, Stockholm, Tokyo, Seoul, DC, etc), and straightforward way to change teams.
Cons
Not for everyone
- Reality is you can't have your cake (be part of a fast growing winning team) and eat it too (have a relaxed slow paced work environment with low expectations). Doing ambitious things isn't easy and things you are expected to move quickly and do things well. This is great for people to see challenges as growth opportunities to take themselves to the next level. For people that don't aspire to be the best at what they do, the environment can be overwhelming. Work life balance is NOT what you would find at a relaxed team at a large technology company BUT is significantly better compared to other start up companies that I have worked for.
