Pros
I met some of the best people I've ever worked with at Ascend. Everyone was always ready to help one another, no matter how dire the situation. I learned a lot. The benefits weren't bad either.
Cons
There was a pretty severe lack of transparency when it came to the health of the company. Each monthly all-hands, management would rave about how great our revenue streams were, and how we were exceeding expectations. It came as quite the surprise when our "healthy" company suddenly needed to lay off a large portion of the workforce. Oddly absent from those layoffs were the massive quantity of C-level executives and VPs. The company seems determined to have an extremely top-heavy organizational structure while hanging vital departments out to dry, such as the CloudOps team. There is not a focus on addressing weaknesses in crucial areas for a SaaS company. Finally, it seems like there is a reorganization of the company every six months or so, which disrupts productivity and processes. It also makes it difficult to have an annual review with a manager who knows your accomplishments.