Pros
- Thirsty Thursday (Beer provided during the last Thursday of the month) - HR department is very good and responsive - 3 weeks vacation AND 6 sick days to start off with. After 5 years with the company it becomes 4 weeks vacation AND 6 sick days. You can purchase more vacation days. - 10 Holidays + 2 floating holidays - Health Care (BCN in Michigan) was always great for me, personally - 401(K) - $150 gym reimbursement yearly - Alright place to start (career-wise as a Programmer) as an intern/out of college - Summer Hours! Between Memorial Day-Labor Day, if you work 9 hours a day (Monday - Thursday) you can take half of Friday off! - Great & smart co-workers. Very friendly/fun to talk to - Learned how to transition from a college student to a professional environment - Working remotely when you need to - Some flex time (come in slightly later/leave slightly early if you need something is done, such as a Doctor's appointment) - Got to develop new things, some things in modern languages too! (C#, SQL) - Focused on data privacy - It is a flat line organization, so at least your ideas are heard. - The management are genuinely great people. - Made a difference in the organization
Cons
- Very low pay, especially for our field - In some ways you can grow, in some ways you can't grow - Outdated office - We use outdated technology (VB6, SAS, ColdFusion, etc), and outdated tools (Sourcesafe for source control) - People want to STICK to these outdated tools - Some people are not willing to learn the new technologies/tools - We don't do the proper SDLC, mostly like a wild west of developing software - We can't focus on developing new stuff, because we are busy always putting out fires due to poor decision making years ago - Inefficiently ran - Overworked - Old School mentality - Resistant to change - Adding to our technical debt - We talk about the long term, but we are always putting out fires and focusing on the short term - Some tension between Project Staff and Programmers. Not as bad as it used to be, though - Layoffs. The moment revenue goes down, we lay people off!Then we hire people the second revenue goes up. This is kind of good and bad. It's good because it gets rid of poor performers, but once you get rid of all the poor performers, then the good performers jobs are at risk. Obviously, layoffs are overall a bad sign because your job is always at risk. - Work IS your life. There is an illusion of Work/Life balance