Pros
- Very supportive learning culture, the company hires many undergrads without coding experience and teaches them in a structured format - Pay and benefits are very high, although it can create golden handcuffs if you adjust your lifestyle to that high pay - People in systems (software) are very friendly and nice, no cut-throat culture. Many also come from a diverse set of humanities backgrounds and are pretty interesting to talk to. Seeing some comments about race and gender, this is not something I have personally witnessed an issue with. As someone in neither of these groups, ask to speak to someone at the company with your shared experiences, a recruiter will put you in contact with someone - Rarely need to work more than 40-hours a week, extra time spent is and should be included/comped. Sometimes I work 50 in a week but that's once every month or so - I have time and energy outside of work to spend on hobbies and interests - There's a shortage of leaders, both engineers and managers, and so there's plenty of room for promotion and advancement. Manager is easier to get promoted to because fewer engineers want to switch from writing code to managing.
Cons
- Lots of smart people means you need to consistently perform well, this pressure has caused me to feel stressed and burnt-out at times. Management is not always good about feedback and so you aren't always good at knowing your standings - This is more something I noticed for experienced hires, but you need to figure out how to be independent and showcase your work/progress on your own. If you can't take a vague task and figure out how to solve it, or if you like to work with very little oversight, you will not have a good time. People from undergrad figure out the McMasterisms after 2-3 years, experienced hires into the lead engineer role get let-go at a much higher rate. Word of advice, for the love of god do not spend time chasing side-quests, focus on producing deliverables. Once you have established yourself as a strong performer you can branch out a bit - For undergrads, if you need clear cut instructions and structured tasks, you will find this job difficult. You have to be on top of your stuff and self-sufficient. Always be asking questions to show you care about learning, investigate ambiguity on your own before asking for help, and don't take the 3:50 shuttle after the first 6 months of working. It's just not a good look unless you get to the office at 7am. - They aren't so micro-managy that there's a Jiro ticket for every little thing, but there is a decent amount oversight and tracking, more-so recently. It can feel like you're always running towards a goal all the time - You get very little choice over your subject area in the company as an undergrad. It's whatever the business needs, and so you could end up doing something you don't care about with lots of off-hours work. This is less of a con if you just care about breaking into tech as a whole, every team has people who enjoy their particular domain it's just a matter of preference - I said it before and I'll say it again, self-induced pressure. It's easy to get wrapped up in worrying about breaking things and performing well, I've done it repeatedly and needed to take time off of work. Maybe it's the company culture or maybe it's just me, but I've made my peace with it and it feels sustainable. - I could see myself here for a long time, but it would seem rather boring compared to starting my own company or doing work in a topic I'm more interested in. No engineer joins thinking they'll be here forever, some eventually do and others find they want something else. Regardless it's been a great place for me to get started.