Charles River Analytics Software Developer reviews

CRA is a great place to work. People are generally friendly and there are many experts in their respective fields, from machine learning to human-computer interaction and robotics. Much of the work being done here is cutting edge research, covering a broad range of topics, so no matter what your interest is, you can likely find people working on it. There is a lot of room for growth and taking on leadership roles and responsibilities, but you do need to be willing to push for it and go after it. The company is employee owned, so there is much more of a sense of the company caring about their employees. Salary is fair, if maybe a little low (at least for Software Engineers), but the benefits are extremely good and make up for the difference. Very flexible and family-friendly. Management tends to be very open about the state and direction of the company, much more so than I have seen other places.

The biggest pro (and also biggest con) is the fact that nearly everyone at CRA is either an engineer or a scientist. If you come from a place that was overburdened with management, you might appreciate having less of it around. If you enjoy a lot of freedom to self direct yourself (and can actually do it productively), you'll also do well here. Other pros include total health care coverage (you don't pay a dime towards it), a nice profit-sharing retirement plan of 15% (once you meet the tenure threshold), and as I was leaving, they were transitioning the company to an employee owned company, where stocks of the company are allotted to employees which reside in your retirement account. You accumulate these stocks and when you retire, you cash them out. They also provide snacks, though on a somewhat "limited" basis. (i.e. the snacks are usually gone by Friday and don't get restocked until Monday; contrast to Google, where they stock so many snacks, food and beverages that you couldn't possibly deplete them, even if you were being shady and taking stuff home.) The culture is also a bit "younger" than some other places. This results in a faster pace environment and newer technologies being adopted very quickly. CRA is very supportive in helping employees learn new things, attending conferences, buying books and other resources, etc.