Pros
Having a paycheck every other week is always nice to have. Free soda in the breakroom (free water, but only if you're in a meeting). Donuts on Friday (until the person that does this nice gesture retires)
Cons
TCI International tends to sweep customer problems under the carpet and wait until they don't respond back. Management didn't really know what to focus on or prioritize and their main product really began to spiral with unrealistic goals/objectives. TCI would prepare for orders that hadn't even been fulfilled yet, but they was banked on them being placed eventually (fingers crossed). No sign of growth within the company, not unless you were the son of the head of the company. Definitely lot of blame game going around, conversations/emails tend to be filled with adjectives of "WRONG!" Every month or so there are negative/passive aggressive emails exchanges occur. A lot of things went on behind the scenes (smoking electronic cigarettes one's cubicle). There are no signs/indicators on the bathrooms that say whether the bathroom is vacant or occupied, so there's a lot of confused people/foreign customers violently grabbing at locked doors. Manufacturing/production people are treated like they're in a third world country; some of the folks that are involved in production/manufacturing like to refer to their workplace as a "rat-trap" or "sweat shop." Production people tend to be treated like they're lower class and uneducated. A lot of times at TCI, multiple projects varying in size/technicality are thrown onto the individual whether they are related or not. It's up to the individual to find balance and a solution these projects that tend to be polar opposites (or last minute fixes). Reserving a test bench or project space to run your tests doesn't exist at TCI, if a higher-up person/person's project is more important than yours, they'll kick you out and take your spot. There's no keeping of a baseline configuration for all products at TCI, it's whatever solution gets the same output for whichever product they are currently working on is the key. If you find an error in some product on the way, then sweep it under the table and hope that the customer won't find it or that a future software version will cover up this error. Higher-up staff and the highest position in the company do not have the technical background to make decisions or understand technical issues. When this type of thing happens you get people who are unclear of realistic timeframes of solving technical problems, and layoffs of 10% of their company. For Christmas they bought everybody chocolates (some people are diabetics). If you're on your lunch break managers love to pay visits to their employees and ask them for an explanation or help with a problem even if you're trying to abide by the law and have lunch. Whether you're trying to rest in your cube during lunch or eating in the break room, if management wants something to be fixed they tend to not care if they take you away from your lunch. "Hard-work" is not clearly defined, if you are efficient/effective at what you do they would rather see you in the office till 8PM and up early the next day. Word travels quickly in this small company even if the information about you is confidential. Conversations are held in the middle of the hallways and tend to attract people (mostly upper management/management), and although management might not need to be in the conversation, they tend to stick around in the conversation to make it seem like they're having an intelligent/important discussion. Every week management has you write down a detailed description of your weekly milestones and what you've been working on, but then when they confront you in the hall about what you've been up to they act as if they have no idea of what you've been up to.
