Pros
- Good pay - Passionate people who love what they do - Location - right across the street from Bethesda Metro, and lots of fun bars and dining options around the office - Some leadership are great - They are trying to improve morale There are a lot of negative reviews of CSS here, but the company really is trying to do better. I think the last employee survey really opened up leadership's eyes with the morale issues and there is an effort underway to try to improve things. We all have to remember that morale isn't fixed in a day, and the high stress, high visibility work that we are doing would ruin the morale of even the best place. What I would say to anyone thinking about joining CSS is - DO IT. I personally love my leadership team, and yes this place is a little crazy at times, but everyone is so passionate and there are so many people who are genuinely friendly and nice that it makes up for some of the bad days (which happen at any organization).
Cons
- There is a culture of "blame" when something goes wrong, or if there is a disagreement on a decision which is probably also one of the factors that is bringing down morale - but I have seen an effort by some managers to try not to play into the blame-game (things are changing, we just need to be patient) - Senior leadership (the C-suite) provide direction and deadlines without fully understanding the work/issues which mean that there are tight deadlines with very little slack/wiggle room for errors/emergencies - Promotion path is not clear - Work life balance is pretty skewed towards work...but there are initiatives to improve this, so this will hopefully be a temporary situation