Pros
* Other individuals contributors are fantastic. Lots of smart and great people. * If you can figure out how to play by management's rules, you can go far pretty easily. * Relatively easy job as long as you get used to the sudden priority shifts and wading through communication issues. I never really had to work late or weekends. * There are opportunities for career changes within the company.
Kontras
Oh, boy, where do I begin. * It was OK until the last 6-9 months. There was a management change. I used to say that I worked for Sling, but it quickly became Dish. Most of my points about management were a result of this change. * Management did not listen to employee feedback at all. It seemed that management had the mentality of "Do as I say, don't talk back, don't ask questions, and tell me how good I am doing." Management had no desire to enable employees to do their jobs. Management only used employees to do things that would gain favor with their superiors. Since management was sycophants, they expected their employees to be sycophants as well. I just wanted to do a good job, that's it. I didn't want to have to play politics and always thing "What does the director really want?" or "How will thing make my manager look good?" Various issues came up and I had no support from my manager. Also, if ideas were proposed by management, there was very little room for feedback. But let's not forget that management was new and really didn't know how thing were done. * So much infighting. Seriously, this would put most legal dramas to shame how much infighting there was. IT and Product couldn't get along. With IT, it was dev vs non-dev. And even within the non-dev managers within IT, there was so much talking behind each others backs. Managers put on the the face that they know what they are doing, but it was obvious that it wasn't the case. You know, it is OK to ask for help sometimes from your employees. * They are not Scrum. They say they are Scrum, but they are not. They wanted to have managers attend retros which is a no-no within Scrum circles. * Communication within the entire org is just atrocious. It was always "trickle down" or "through the grapevine" types of communications. Rumor mills were rampant because there was no very clear communication. Something would need to be communicated, a manager would tell one person, they would then have that one person tell other people, and that's it. That's how information was spread. Also, any attempt at trying to change this behavior was met with resistance, almost as if you question a manager's authority because you provided a suggestion on how to do something differently. * They company is flat out cheap. They use the phrase "Spend money like it is your own", but they are just cheap. Benefits are horrible and the medical plan, well, at least it is a medical plan. If you really need a job, go ahead and work for Dish/Sling until you find something better. If you have any other options, take them.
