Pros
This is unfortunately difficult to answer because everything I used to love about this company is no longer applicable. There used to be a sense of optimism and high morale, both of which have very quickly disappeared. I used to think the pay was good, but I also found out I have teammates making half of what I make. They are trying to roll out a retention plan, but the bonuses/stock options are all over the board with no real sense of consistency. In turn, the lower earning employees are losing the little motivation they had left New upper management came in around summer time, but little has changed. This is probably the last trace of hope here.
Cons
There were massive RIFs due to COVID. The problems didn't lie in the RIFs themselves, but how they were enacted. Employees who were impacted received severance packages in the bank over the weekend before anything was announced. There were also so many rounds we dubbed the term "Massacre Mondays." This was the beginning of the end. Morale plummeted and management did little to nothing to alleviate the aches and pains of those who remained. We are still feeling the ramifications of this and in turn everyone is jumping ship as fast as they can. We have lost many people to direct competitors and AA refuses to match their offers to retain the few people we have left. The nepotism is quite obvious and appalling. I saw in a previous response AA mentioned 2 out of the 4 cofounders are married, but also failed to mention that the other 2 are the married couple's nephew and their nephew's childhood best friend. This has fostered a very top down, yes-man, head down type of culture. The only people who seem to get promoted also have a close connection to upper management. Otherwise, growth isn't much of an option here. Personally I've been here for years and inflation has grown faster than my salary. I know this is the case for nearly everyone on my team as well. Racism and sexism is very prevalent here. The most quantitative and objective example is that there exists an AA organization of at least 40 people where there is just one woman and zero BIPOC. The product we offer simply does not work as advertised and customers have been unhappy time and time again. AA prides itself on building most tools/products in house, but as a result we've been stretch too thin. The most recent products are all in beta at best, but we push them as if they're enterprise ready. Upper management also seems to be blissfully unaware of the shortcomings/utter lies. For example, we won an AI/ML award, yet we offer virtually no AI/ML in any product we offer. Execs were shocked to learn this.
