A few good things - a lot of room for improvement
Pros
- Very willing to hire college graduates, so it's an opportunity to get your foot in the door and get some work experience on your resume. - Solid benefit package if you're an individual, with dental, health and vision coverage and 100% 401k matching up to 8% of your salary. - Casual attire is a bonus. Jeans, t-shirts and flipflops are common, and on Fridays, you can even wear sweatpants. - There are some great, talented people here and you're likely to find/make friends. - A few teams have good managers. These are the money areas; if you get into these places, you'll likely find that your hard work is appreciated and that you are recognized for what you can contribute. Opportunities for promotion are still slim and salary will still be subpar, but it helps to get into those pockets where you not only have good coworkers but also a supportive supervisor.
Cons
- A lot of the reviews mention salary, and they're not incorrect. You can easily jump $5-10K by switching companies. - While the benefits are good, they're leveraged back against employees as reason for poor salaries in every review. - Most teams lack either training, manager support or both. CS in particular is stretched so thin that oftentimes new employees don't get the onboarding necessary to help them be effective. More rampant, however, is the tendency of many on the middle management level to manage up (i.e., kowtow to upper management) at the expense of being a support system for those that they're in charge of. - There's been a growing problem with the concerns of the rank-and-file employee being devalued. Not in all cases, but if there are complaints about a supervisor or manager, the general message from higher up is, "If you can't work it out with them, you obviously are the problem. Not your manager." So if you can play the game, drink the kool-aid and work your way into a middle management role, pat yourself on the back. It's like getting tenure - even poor reviews from your employees won't matter so long as you're still playing nice with upper management. - There is a lot of emphasis on the "fun company culture" and a lot of work has gone into this aspect of the company - even so far as the creation of a chief culture officer, which is a position that I've never seen at any other organization. This would be a bonus, but when there are so many cracks in the foundation, it just comes across as a waste of time, energy and resources. - There's an overall parental feel to the company, and not necessarily in a good way. Everything is monitored. Websites are blocked at upper management's discretion or based solely on URL with no regards for the actual content of the site. All of your internet usage is tracked and analyzed and can be used against you regardless of how efficient you are or how good of a job you're doing. The same with every email and IM. The highest levels of management are notified if "naughty" words pop up anywhere. It comes down to a general lack of trust. The company does not trust that the majority of their employees are grown ups and will do their jobs and those that don't will be rather apparent.
