Pros
- Decent benefits package: life, health, dental, vision insurance options are very reasonable. - Cheap snacks and free soda, plus good amount of "fun" activities for employees during the year (barbeques, parties, sports events, etc) - Free and discounted products from the website twice a year - Super nice people at low and mid levels (base pay workers in manufacturing, engineers, etc), most folks here are dedicated, passionate, trustworthy, and competent. - Recognition program allows employees to recognize noteworthy achievements of other employees directly. - Relatively open atmosphere - easy to talk with other people, and use of technology to communicate is good, just wish it was used more by upper management instead of only by the underlings. - Family friendly: the company is very forgiving when it comes to kids' appointments or school events. They provide time off and maternity/paternity leave (at least per law, in some cases a little nicer I think). However, see the note below. - Trying to be eco-friendly in some ways. Quite a bit of recycled product is used in manufacturing and the manufacturing facilities practice good methods to make sure that as much as possible that is recyclable, gets recycled. More could be done, of course, but at least it is a start.
Cons
- Huge discrepancy in executive compensation vs. everyone else. Executives get millions of shares of stock and large salaries quarterly and yearly, whereas most employees get very few if any stock options and have much lower pay rates, even though we put in a lot more hours and a lot more heartache. Mostly happened after we went public on the stock market. - Impossible to get ahead. 5+ years of dedicated HARD work and still no promotion or professional development plan of any kind. Once you are in, you are stuck, and can expect new upper management to be hired from outside the company (major bummer). - "Work / Life Balance" is way off. Company operates 24 / 7 but employees get no respite. - Bonus structure is effectively non-existent. After many years of trying to get a reasonable, regulated bonus structure (pay for performance, etc) one still does not exist (at least in my department) - Outsourcing is terrible, whether it is engineering, customer service, or manufacturing. Loss of quality controls, coordinated and consistent training, difficult to maintaining levels of service and communication. - Turning into a place that micro-manages, but has terrible management skills at the same time. Not a good combination. Was much better before we went public on the stock market, it felt more like a 'family' of people working together to create incredible products and services, now it feels more like your typical Fortune 500 company that doesn't care as much about its workers as people as it does in turning the biggest profits, regardless of the 'human cost'. - Marketing team needs to be fired. They don't think about the 'big picture' when doing things, and often end up causing huge headaches to other parts of the company like customer service and manufacturing, yet there are never any repercussions. - Mostly family friendly: it would be really nice if the company offered on-site or subsidized childcare. More and more companies are doing this, and are finding that it really helps boost productivity therefore lowering costs.