What isn't a con? Even the free coffee tastes terrible. Mandatory "togetherness" breifings because they introduced some micromanagement tools to help the overlord managers dig their spindly little fingers deeper into your work life. Absolutely no autonomy, you are a drone for the greater good. It won't feel like corporate for a while because nerf guns, and alcohol on friday, but really you have no freedom. 3 people on the team will dictate to you what you are going to do and how you are going to do it, down to the format of your sql scripts. Not for the purposes of uniformity or team cohesion. In fact, I was the only one who performed this particular task, but they made sure I had this specific sql format, or else.
15 year old Vb.net code that was written by a procedural programmer from hell, about 5 different versions of .net in production so I hope you like context switching.
Was told that I would be participating in development of a new ui from scratch. Instead was shoved into a hole where I solved help desk tickets and did almost no development for almost the entire duration of my employment. Despite regular meetings discussing this misrepresentation of the position during the interview process, there was not a single step made to show good faith in this regard. Even to the last day I was there, they kept me chained up in my hole closing help desk tickets, instead of performing my craft as a software developer.
As a result, this company is crushing my career, as I knew it would. Without dev experience for the better part of a year, I'm not able to find another job, and I keep getting calls for help desk and sql dba positions... which I explained meticulously to management nigh on every other day before I left.
To them work culture is beer on Fridays and random nerf gun fights, because middle school. But really the work culture is horrendous. No accountability, no professionalism, no drive, no collaboration, no communication, the team lacks motivation for any self started initiative, everything is impossible to them, the management makes demands on the team while holding the leash preventing them from accomplishing those demands. Stay away.
It would also seem that the dev team management and project managers are getting the same misinformation and micromanagement from above them, so far as I can tell. During my time here I met 2 people specifically who experienced the same lies, deception, misrepresentation of the job description and what they were to be doing. Both of these people were in escalated positions from my lowly dev chair. There's a feeling of zombieness, of droning day in and day out. A sense of apathy, that at least I'm getting paid.
