Pros
- Founded on good principles. - Not big enough yet so you are not just a number. - Uses interesting technology and likes to embrace new industry trends and standards. - Excellent agile principles (almost) - Product is part of a global good enterprise, which is healthcare. - Opportunity to grow if you are up to it and the price it will cost. - Global culture and likelihood of traveling. - Good benefits. - Nice activities every quarter. - Opportunity to attend seminars and events even outside your local office's country. - Nice intra company activities like poker nights. - Lots and lots of free food and treats.
Cons
- Too many managers. - The company knows where it wants to be but in terms of technology and overall architecture it doesn't really know what they are doing. They improvise and react too much rather than consolidate knowledge. - Things are way too secretive. - Communication is not clear in a healthy way at any level. - Poor decisions regarding legacy applications which translates into frustration and lack of motivation for engineers. - Promotes an environment for incompetent people to climb up the corporate ladder. This creates a negative feedback loop effect where new ambitious employees cover up for older incompetent ones, effectively shielding the real problems from outside departments/locations. On the other hand if you are more concerned about long term career growth than actual valued work this place is a good fit. - People are mostly promoted for political reasons or by merits when their interests align more closely with those of their direct manager. - People from different departments don't talk to each other effectively. Too much confusion over decisions. - This company has a very powerful legal muscle which can get you "legally" fired without giving you a chance for a real due process. If you are someone who doesn't like to compromise your principles, beware, This has actually happened more than once. - Too many project managers who inadvertently obstruct the agile process. Mostly manager's fault I think. - Some managers are not at all qualified to manage which provokes some teams to be micro-managed and with low morale. Fortunately there are other teams with good managers. It's a matter of luck.
