Pros
(Oh I have time today. Haa Watch this...) ScaleMatrix did not pay very well when I started, but it was the ideal environment to start out in IT. It is difficult to get your first IT job, with no experience. The way I approached it though was, some people would pay classes, "bootcamps", etc. ridiculous amounts of money to gain knowledge, so I thought of the money I wasn't getting as an automatic cost of gaining not only knowledge, but also valuable work experience. I stayed for as long as I could, until I could not afford it anymore, but what I got out of it has been valuable for my career. Your experience is really up to you. Outside of your dailies, you may feel you don't "do" much. Some said to me, they hit a wall after a couple months. That can definitely be true. You can do your dailies and other tasks and then "relax"... if that's what you want, but you're in a datacenter with all kinds of clients with different environments you can learn. You can use your downtime to study what you want, create and learn for your homelab, improve broken things, learn how to automate some of your boring tasks, etc. learn and build connections with engineers and clients, collaborate with your coworkers who are also into learning... It's great for people who don't let any job dictate their progress. I had a SOC Manager (Roe) who was very encouraging, insightful, and can be brutally honest IF you asked him to be. During my phone interview, he told me he could see me becoming a Systems Engineer before I knew what that was. Surprise... that's what I have become so far. A SOC Leader (Justin), no ego, he would teach you if you are interested in asking, he encouraged me to use the Linux stuff he had set up and learn SSH, BASH, scripts, etc. with him. He used to bust out the whiteboard for me when he could. I've had two other IT jobs since, and the two types of people I just mentioned have been rare in my short experience so far. When I got promoted to a SysAdmin type role, the IT Director (Gabe) and Sr. Systems Engineer (Jeff "Turbo") were also great to learn from and were very supportive and encouraging during my learning process. They gave me projects, trusted me with them, then taught me the what and why of those projects. First time I ever said, "I fcking love my job." Oops I just cussed.
Cons
For long-term, it's expensive to live in California, so I just wish ScaleMatrix paid a higher salary. I would definitely work there tomorrow if that became the case. Outside of that, it is an ideal environment to learn, self-study, you get to see how stuff works if you're curious and inquisitive enough, and you can build some great connections along the way.