I worked at Auto-trol support for 6 years ... 6 good years. The pros were that you could do basically what you wanted ... a great place to learn... and clueless managers mainly concerned about their nest career move, not productivity or results.
Cons
The demise of Auto-trol was without a doubt because all senior managers ... and I mean ALL ... did not understand the technology nor the industry we were selling into... and this was especially true on the mechanical side.