Pros
Relaxed environment Wide variety of work Relaxed policy about lunch beers and the like Fantastic and talented people to work with Ability to work from home on occasion Provide the means to improve professionally, whether its online courses or the occasional conference Monthly catered meetings Amazing monthly beer club at the office after work Occasional also amazing adventure club outings, which tend to be something wild like paintball, kayaking, or skii trip There’s also a killer Fun Committee for happy hours and an annual Mindgrub Olympics
Cons
Embarrassingly underpaid salaries Hilariously out of touch ‘Human Capital Management’ department Having to micromanage your timesheet. I get it, but it’s still a pain Consistently overworking the employees to meet overpromised deadlines. There was a particularly bad stretch working with an...exellont client where the mobile, web, and design teams were putting in 50 hour weeks for several months. Eventually much further down the line, a couple comp days were handed out but it was awful for morale. They’re down to 2 or 3 project managers for the same number of projects that were handled by 11 PMs originally. This is probably my biggest issue. The CEO has literally told the company at the monthly meetings that employees are expected to work the extra hours in order to meet deadlines(with no compensation unless one dogs their manager for months, then a token day or two maybe). He then pulled up a spreadsheet of worked hours for the company and was extolling the 50-60hr employees and saying they’re a great example to the rest. The CEO also has odd pursuits for the business that come out of left field, such as the SNAX robot that’s supposed to deliver snacks to people at their desks. At every stage it wasn’t seen as feasible (and it still isn’t), though it’s a fun side project to show off. But I can’t help but feel like these pursuits aren’t justified as the best uses of money when everyone is underpaid and overworked.
