Great Company With Excellent Work/Life Balance.
Pros
My experience with Marathon TS has been completely positive at this point. I work on an interesting project, with a great team, for an excellent customer. I get to work full time remotely, which greatly improves my quality of life, and I have very flexible working hours so that, in most circumstances, I can contribute to the project at the times that work best for my natural productivity cycle. Admittedly, this is one of the best companies that I've worked for across the board. Every day I get to come to work ready to learn and grow with the team while we focus on delivering a high quality product to our customers. There's little to no crunch time, and a lot of communication between teams and their respective members, which gives a feeling of cohesion and camaraderie. One of my favorite perks of working for Marathon TS is the ability to earn extra money, as funding is available, by working more hours. This incentivizes putting in extra effort into what you build, and helps take away the sting of the rare instances of crunch time. The corporate staff has been wonderful to work with as well, and they will personally check up on me from time to time to see how I'm doing and if I'm enjoying the work. They're quick to answer questions that I may have and work with me if I face a situation where I need special accommodations. They also have a generous referral program to aid in bringing on new staff. Also, since the teams that you work on typically aren't very large, there's a lot of visibility and room to really contribute to the direction of a project for those who choose to take the initiative.
Cons
For everything that I like about working for Marathon TS, there are a few things that could stand to improve. For starters, the benefits program is a bit lackluster in comparison with some of their competitors. Given the size of their company, this is understandable and there's indication that as the company continues to grow and mature, the benefits package will as well. On that note, for most positions the salary is very good, however for senior level talent the compensation is a bit lacking. That being said, their overtime policies can help bridge this gap and, additionally, the ability to work from home full time does carry a lot of weight in compensation considerations. Another thing that I personally found disappointing was the inability to negotiate what tier you started out with on the vacation policy. In an industry where the customer can easily pull funding from your project and you can end up looking for new work every few years if you're unfortunate, the ability to permit senior level staff to start higher up on the vacation policy would greatly aid in talent acquisition and retention since it lessens the risk of losing benefits when switching jobs. The only other thing that I'd add to the cons list, which is admittedly a bit subjective, would be a lack of company wide communications. While I love the personal check ins from corporate, I feel that addressing the staff as a whole a few times a year and letting them know the status of the company more often would be a great overall benefit to the employees. Knowing how well the company is doing in the industry can help people feel at ease in their roles in a market that is uncertain.
