A rapidly growing, highly entrepreneurial manufacturer of super-scalable storage systems and solutions
Pros
DDN is focused on building stuff and it is still run by the founders. Those two things makes DDN highly entrepreneurial and an exciting place to work. We're currently making the transition from a small business in the $125 million range with 300 employees and mostly US market coverage (two years ago) to twice that revenue, twice the number of employees, and worldwide coverage (today). Despite the Great Recession of the past four years, we're growing at 25% per year in revenue and have healthy profit margins as well. Best of all, the company makes something -- extremely large-scale storage hardware and solutions -- that our increasingly digital world desperately needs and wants. We have innovative technologies that have been perfected in the field for up to ten years, and in an age of patent trolls, we are well protected by solid technology patents. What that means to you is this: the company is healthy and your paycheck is as reliable as one could possibly expect in the the modern world of at-will employment. So, if you're the kind of person who thrives on change, you'd enjoy DDN. In terms of culture, the single largest segment of our management comes from HP -- and they speak fondly of the old HP, the entrepreneurial HP that loved to build things, not the new HP that loved to gimmick the stock price and just laid off 17,000 employees. As I read the tea leaves, the new management, with the blessing of the founders, wants to make DDN over into a new, improved HP. Your own feelings about the old and new HP will tell you whether or not that's a good fit for you. In terms of employee compensation and benefits, the pay is competitive but not excessive. Support personnel can choose to work on salary or hourly, depending on whether they want to get paid lots of money for overtime. There are quarterly or annual employee bonuses as well, even for non-sales rank and file. Benefits are competitive with Silicon Valley -- there are medical, dental, and vision insurance plans, FSA plans, short-term and long-term disability insurance, and a 401k plan with a 50% employer match for the first $3,000 contributed each year. And every employee gets stock options.
Cons
Although a fun place to work, DDN is also a chaotic place to work, because we're growing so fast and have so many new employees, including new managers. The right hand often doesn't know what the left hand is doing. BUT we're in the process of fixing that. If you prefer orderly systems and processes, wait a year or two. We're working on those to make the company scalable to the billion-dollar-plus range, but we're not there yet. However, those who want to BUILD those new systems processes should come on board now. There's company-building opportunity here.