Pros
- I was one of the lucky few who had a supportive manager. Many others do not and cannot switch.
- L&D time and budget (to attend conferences, etc.)
- Opportunities to work on different projects and use different tech stack, as well as grow consulting skills.
Kontras
- After several years at the company, I watched it decline from a place where everyone wanted to work -- because it had a strong and diverse apprenticeship program that helped bring more people into tech from non-traditional backgrounds -- to a place where people were fleeing on a weekly basis.
- Several rounds of layoffs where nearly every junior engineering role has been sacked, and the company has lost its diversity because of it.
- A company that once held the ideals of Education, Ownership and Humanity is now chasing AI trends and buzzwords.
- New senior leadership split the company into practices, and there was no longer an environment of collaboration and camaraderie. Instead, it became a hostile, competitive environment where people no longer shared resources, time or expertise with one another.
- There's a huge sales problem at the company, the brunt of which gets passed down to the engineers. Sales teams would often overpromise to clients to get them to sign contracts (i.e. "Sure! We can do that project with 4 engineers in 3 months, even though we really need double the engineers and time.) I saw many people get severely burnt out by their projects, working long hours to cover for understaffing. The company only cared about keeping profit margins high and not keeping engineers healthy and sane.