Pros
Most of the people are great. It's a fun, friendly, and collaborative atmosphere, and the work can be fascinating. While pay is low, stock options could ultimately hold good long-term value. There is an incredible collection of talent and it's an amazing place to learn from your coworkers.
Cons
At a fast-growing start-up, some issues are inevitable. However, for such a young company, turnover has been high and seems to be increasing lately. I've heard more than one talented former employee say they want to see the company "burn to the ground." Many employees feel taken for granted. They take large pay cuts to work there, and in return management treats basic requests like a coffee maker as being frivolous and luxurious. The good news is these problems are fixable. The bad news is it's not clear that management thinks this is even a problem. Ultimately, the problem flows down from the top. Dan is not a good CEO. He's decent at pitching Civis to potential clients (although many clients strongly dislike working with him), and he's very good at convincing Eric Schmidt to fund his operation. But he is an abysmal manager of people. In particular, he is overconfident in his vision, and rarely listens to input from the employees. He takes criticism so personally that the rest of senior management team has to expend an enormous amount of effort to manage his ego. I've heard some discussion of sending Eric Schmidt a letter of no confidence in Dan's leadership, though I don't know if anything has ever come of it. If Dan were a brilliant strategic mind, that might make up for it. But he's banking on a strategy of becoming a software company and building a "data science platform." While Dan is confident in this idea, at least half of the company is understandably skeptical that the market for this product will ever fully materialize. It is extremely useful internally, and similarly useful for a small number of clients, but Civis would be better off focusing on consulting and using the software to make the consulting operation more efficient, rather than trying to build a software product most clients will never know how to use. I would also agree with a previous reviewer who noted the company's poor track record in retaining female senior staffers. Unconscious bias against women is fairly rampant. The record speaks for itself.