Pros
The company is experiencing a lot of significant growth and opportunity. For the most part, there is a friendly camaraderie amongst the employees. The company is seeing success, and is a leader in the Card Processing Industry. The lunch is catered every day with no charge to the employees. The break room provides a nice coffee machine, as well as tea, fruit, fresh water, and often other employee bought or made bagels, donuts, or baked goods. Some employees have the flexibility to sometimes work from home, or adjust their hours to cater to their children's schedules. Management and Employees have been recently putting in efforts to make the company better. The organizing of social events has recently been occurring (Run Club, Basketball team, bi weekly happy hour, almost quarterly company party or event). The office is located in a very nice, safe, and wealthy area. The train station is a short walk away from the office for city commuting convenience. The culture is becoming increasingly diverse. The excitement in growth and success includes product installation at the Superbowl, NBA Finals, etc.
Cons
The office and culture is very face paced. Sometimes you may have to handle issues on the weekends or at night when the office closes. There is so much information and complexities to the industry, where the company does not do a proper and thorough job training the new hires on all of this. There is a lot of sink or swim, inevitable to fail the first few times, type of learning and experience. Some positions have a very difficult time finding any work life balance. The company hurts when certain individuals take time off. Many positions need other people to help support or fill in. The Salary and Incentives framework for some positions isn't the best (management tries to get the most out of the workers for the cheapest price). There tends to be a little intimidation and disconnect with management and employees at times. I know some employees who haven't even had conversations or formal introductions with the CEO or CTO. There is a negative stigma based on past incidences where employees may feel paranoia of being fired or being influenced to be fired or resign (possible alliance or collusion behind others awareness). Since the company is private, there sometimes is a lot of stuff that happens that HR does not enforce and alleviate (Cursing, yelling, inappropriate discussion, inappropriate phone or electronic communication, improper employee treatment). The fast paced culture creates acceptance of things like: since lunch is catered in the office, we should eat back at our desks and keep working; lunch breaks are rarely ever taken. Positive reinforcement and mentoring can be improved. Sometimes the amount of criticism makes the positives go unnoticed. Employees tend to be given unreal expectations at times, and if these expectations are not met, there tends to criticism and repercussion. The fast paced, sink or swim, chaotic, fire drill environment can be extremely stressful and mentally draining.