Great coworkers. Nice environment. Not-so-great management
Pros
(I can only speak for the department I worked at, each department can be different) - Esri is an extremely multi-cultural place to work at. People come from all around the world and most are very nice and try to make some friends, so it is easy to have some good friendship here. - Work life balance is good. In some departments/teams there is work-from-home policy, and work hour can be very flexible. It's good for those who have kids or other duties to take care of during the day. - Because Esri is the biggest "GIS shop" in the world, it was easy to work with customers from all kinds of backgrounds and to see all sorts of interesting projects. Esri's User Conference has over 15K attendees each year and it was very mind-blowing to see/listen to how users apply Esri's technologies to solve their problems. It made me feel proud to work at Esri. - The Esri headquarter is a very beautiful campus, and Redlands itself is a nice place to live and start a family. The town itself is historical and has some of the best schools for kids, and is just 1-hours away from LA, and 1-hour away from the mountain area where people can go hiking, skiing, rock-climbing and mountain-biking . - Unlike some people who think the compensation is much lower compared to other places, the overall compensation package is actually not bad and it can support a decent living in Redlands. Esri also provides extremely good benefits (visa sponsorship, 401K matching, insurance, FSA, onsite gym room, onsite bike storage room, etc.) --- Another reason to settle down and start a family in Redlands.
Cons
(Again I am only speaking for the department I worked at) - Since the job environment is stable, it's not uncommon to see those who are under-productive (or not see them because most of the time they're not in office). Even worse, there are some team leads who have been here long enough who think they are the authority of everything. A lot of additional team processes are added just to make these leads happy, and these processes can change from time to time depending on when they change their mind. - Esri has an annual review system in place, and it requires employees to set goals each year. But this is just the hardware! Changing job roles/team is extremely difficult even although you work really hard to prove yourself. Some managers set up regular meetings with individual team members (which is a good thing), but these conversation do not help unless you want to move to the direction that they want. Some conversations can even lead you to think it's your fault not doing a good enough job to earn the opportunity (I blamed it mostly on the lead/manager, not Esri). This is the main reason I chose to leave Esri. - Teams try to run software development process, but it's not uncommon to see big code changes/last minute check-in happening after code freeze. Sometimes changes can happen without team members being notified. This is a disrespect to the team but what's worse is the quality of the software can be hurt. Also, some teams do not value design and/or QA process. Some people just rush through software development and then hand over the software to QA who have no ideas how things are expected to work. - Esri has a very flat organizational structure --- this is a double-edged sword and doesn't necessarily lead you to opportunities to try out different things or pursue career passion. Having a flat structure means you might be pulled into the tasks you like or you hate. And because most people have the same title, you really have to learn the company's politics to know who to talk to to sort out different things. - When I started a few years ago, the entire orientation was a half-a-day activity which only covered the HR stuff, and I had little idea about how Esri's technologies work and how users use them. Given that Esri builds so many products, I really hope that the company has improved to give new employees a more detailed introduction on how things work together. - Many tech shops nowadays provide perks like free lunch, free snacks, beer, game room, massage sessions, even onsite barristers. Esri does have fancy coffee machines all over the campus, a gym room, and a free Christmas breakfast every year, and the company probably doesn't need these perks to attract the "GIS-geeks" to apply and join, but moving forward it's time to considering adding some of these to boost employees' happiness.