Pros
The people you work with on a daily basis are really friendly You can take dogs into work You can work whatever hours and take whatever holidays you want If you want to just take a salary and chill out (for as long as the company lasts) - this place is perfect for you As an engineer you are really close to the business side
Cons
I was taken into a meeting room one day and fired without any warning. There wasn't a coherent reason, or concrete examples of misconduct. I can only think of two possibilities: 1) They wanted to free up my salary, and didn't want people (including me) to know. This would explain the nature of the firing. 2) The drone squad leadership had a personal problem with me (which was the incoherent reason given). This is the case that worries me the most for current and future employees, and since nobody at the company, at any point, has asked for my side of the story (seriously: How would they know if this was racially motivated?!), I guess it's only fair that I state my side here. The drone squad is micromanaged by two team leaders who are nice guys, but incredibly inexperienced (as an example: one insisted on calibrating an experimental setup with a model, then used the same experiment to validate the model, the other disagreed with a conclusion which had >99% statistical confidence from experimental results, so cherry-picked the data and presented the opposite conclusion to senior leadership). They don't like it when you disagree, even when you do so honestly, professionally, and (unless publicly asked) in private. The first time I disagreed with them: 1) They ask my opinion on what I think the best way forward is in a group meeting, I say something different to what they say. 2) They book a separate meeting with me, we both discuss our sides, they ask me to agree to their proposal again, I don't (because I honestly don't), but I say it's fine if they decide to do what they want to do. 3) They take it personally, asking why I don't respect their expertise (?!): I have to book a follow-up meeting where I remind them of the "disagree and accept" concept, which is outlined in the employee handbook, I tell them that I don't have to agree for them to move forward and that it doesn't effect my motivation: I am happy to have been listened to, but ultimately will get on board with whatever decision is made. I also state that it's just my professional opinion about a decision and not a personal reflection on them. They are placated. Occasionally, when we repeat this process, I would jump straight to (3) following any disagreement. Between the first of these meetings and my firing, I had 25 one-to-one meetings with my manager where my behavior could have been raised, but wasn't. I also had many interactions with the other manager who only said positive things. Consequently, I thought it was ok; that they understood their own disagree and accept policy and we had found a way forward, and equally that they respected somebody from a different background proposing different ideas. Then, one day, following another disagreement (this time, I sent an email to both managers - and nobody else - saying I was uncomfortable with the aforementioned cherry-picking/deliberate misinformation of senior leadership and wanted to send this email as a paper-trail in case it came back to me), I was led into a room with a very confused head of HR, and handed my notice. I'm not sure how far up the company this goes, but I do believe the negative reviews on here about the senior leadership. Those two managers are, like everyone else in the company, nice people, but there is some combination of imposter syndrome, ego and inexperience which is either entirely theirs, or partially inherited from senior leadership, in which case they are the unfortunate middlemen. If you want to just chill out and take a salary, then this is the perfect place for you. I honestly wouldn't recommend this company for any other reason: 1) If you are inexperienced, you will probably think it's fantastic, but you are likely to pick up a LOT of bad practices 2) If you are experienced, be prepared to deal with a lot of insecurity from those above you, and have a strong stomach for tolerating ethical and professional misconduct (I can only assume that if you disagree, you too will be fired). Other cons are: - It isn't a particularly challenging environment because leadership is super conservative, and they see risk everywhere they don't have personal expertise (which is pretty much everywhere). - There aren't any technical role models - There are a lot of long, pointless meetings - Communication and organisation are terrible, although that's symptomatic of a typical start-up - The company is already stuck in its ways: it sees a very mechanically complicated drone as low-risk (because it's what they are used to), and a mechanically simple drone as high-risk (because it is different), even after validation. - I think the example of how I have been treated is symptomatic of a company that does not value diversity and is, therefore, not inclusive. A lot of the other reviews here seem to back this up, too.
