Pros
The people are by far this companies best aspect. I worked in the Saskatoon developer office (spent a week in the Winnipeg one) and I can say that they have some of the brightest and most talented developers around. They are all friendly and knowledgeable, and after-work hangouts were frequent, whether it was meeting up for drinks, or organizing board games in the office after hours. There is no shortage of work, over my year and some at Skip, I can honestly say I was never bored. The work is challenging and there are many opportunities for you to create a niche for yourself, whether you want to get involved in DevOps, Business Intel, work in the Front end or Back end. You'll be given a say in how you accomplish your work. While you have to follow style guidelines, if there's a library out there that best suits the piece of work you're doing, you can use it. There's a lot of new tech being used as well. If you have to take time off for meetings or jet out early to look after your kids, that's fine as long as your churning out code and have proven yourself to be a solid employee. You can also work from home when you're ill, again as long as the code still gets churned out. All of the upper management are phenomenal people. They're incredibly intelligent and driven and want you as an employee to exceed. They're also workaholics, you'll never be able to complain to your friends about your bosses slacking off. If you have questions, they'll give you a straight answer, no BS, but they're witty and fun on occasion and the work place is generally light-hearted. If you can get into the Stoon office, guaranteed the office will be laughing at least once or twice throughout the day from someone's off-hand remark. They named the birds outside the office in the spring/summer Rob and Beyonce. It's nice to take a break and watch them build their nest when you need a break from your monitor. There's the potential for non-negligible bonuses/raises given to people who work hard for them.
Cons
There is pressure on occasion to get code out asap, which may involve a couple hours in the evenings or some weekend work. It's not required, but you do get a lot of kudo points for being available to help out with issues after hours, or giving up a weekend to get something out the door. Some people live for that stuff, and it's cool you can take ownership of your work and get it out to meet demands. This is a symptom of a start up company, not so much Skip in general. It's only a con if you're looking to put in your 9-5 and nothing more. Hackathons aren't quite discouraged as much as upper management would rather employees spend the time working on actual work, instead of fun features for the websites/apps. If you're a new grad starting at skip, you should show up before most people and leave after most people to get your code-output higher and keep at this until you're comfortable with the system and have earned everyone's respect. This is still more a symptom of a startup than Skip itself, but it's the reason I docked a star off Work/Life Balance.
