Disappointing new grad program for developers
Pros
Good work-life balance Lots of fun little perks (food, celebrations, etc) Good benefits Interesting products Lots of nice, smart, & interesting coworkers and managers
Cons
Low salary. Company moves at a slow pace. The new grad program ("CSDG" / "EDG") is disappointing. At a high level this is a project rotation program combined with tech support, with the intention of transferring out after 1-2 years with strong product/customer knowledge. There are many problems with this program: -The position is advertised as 50% support 50% project. In reality it becomes 50% support and 50% other, where other is project, meetings, support cases left from last week, etc -The support weeks are rigidly scheduled at 8:30-5:30 with a 1 hour lunch break. If you want time for your project (e.g. a 1 hour meeting with your project team) you need to find someone else to cover you on the phone lines while you are away -Within the first 6-8 months you learn most of what you will get out of support, but you have to keep spending >50% of your time on support until you transfer out. -There is a ton of training built around support, and very very little training built around development -Some of the support cases are interesting, but many are just very simple questions that can be answered by looking at documentation -Transferring to a development team still requires going through the whole interview process as if applying from out of the company.