Pros
none, it is pretty awful
Cons
when i think of my worst employer, and the biggest nightmare of my career, austin lane technologies immediately comes to mind. management regularly attacks employees and assumes their worst intentions. if you misunderstand something or make a mistake, or if they misunderstand your words/actions, you are automatically accused of lying about it. lecture ensues. you have to spend too much time defending yourself to management, when they assume your worst intentions. most of this miscommunication happened as a result of poorly defined project requirements and constantly changing feature design as part of last minute demands from management. management verbally discouraged recognition of tenure anniversaries because the only recognition needed was the paycheck they receive on schedule. they started privately giving cards and cookies at some point. 50-60 hour weeks are not only encouraged but expected, during my time the IT team was working 50-60 hour weeks, every single week. if you're up all night working on something urgent, you are given the "privilege" of coming in at 9am instead of 8am on the following day. it is a badge of honor to not take any of your sick days (3). we had people who came into the office sick all the time. every friday there was "teambuilding" which is a required meeting during your lunch. management spends much of it providing a lecture about some aspect of being a team player or working longer and harder. i saw more than one rant that went on for over an hour. even as a developer you are continuously evaluated in a way that is designed to make you compete with each other. the reward for winning is you don't get a lecture in front of the team. all of this leads to a negative culture where many employees are trying to survive the toxicity. makes it hard to build relationships with your coworkers when you are encouraged to step on each other to get ahead. often the strange tribal culture means there are a lot of unsaid & unwritten rules and breaking them can mean a long lecture from management or disagreement with another department who is competing for the same approval from management. this is not a second family several of the positive reviews are written by current employees, or employees who were still with the company at the time of writing. unfortunately i believe they were under pressure from management to leave overly positive reviews to offset the existing negative ones from ex employees. austin lane technologies has threatened to sue ex employees so it makes me nervous to share this candid feedback, but i feel anyone who is interviewing with them should know these things. i regret my time at austin lane and wish i hadn't stayed for as long as i did. if you read this far, run away as fast as you can. apply at mcdonald's because you'll be treated with more respect and dignity.