Pros
- WFH at your leisure (gone this year with RTO mandate) - half day fridays year round (gone this year) - Fun brands from your childhood or your childrens' childhood (until they get outlicensed) - Benefits are actually still decent and haven't been clawed back yet - Work with toys - Free coffee & snacks - COL adjustment and annual bonus that are okay... the latter can be great some years.
Cons
Where to start... constant layoffs and reorgs, almost no one left to do the actual work, pushing AI everything - to the point where it is costing us contracts with licensors, entire departments/functions/disciplines being let go with the expectation that AI and/or overseas teams will "handle it". The looming specter of a move to Boston that we all know is happening but no one in leadership is acknowledging. (If you can't afford to pay RI area salaries, how are you going to afford to pay Boston area salaries?) All of these decisions are being made by folks who haven't actually designed/developed a product in decades, if at all, and don't remember/know how stuff actually gets made. Outdated systems that don't talk to eachother creating stupid amounts of nonsense and redundant work. Zero upward mobility. As you lose your friends every few months your workload doesn't change.
