Pros
Your fellow ICs will, for the most part, be great people. I get a long well with most of my coworkers, and to be honest we've bonded a lot over talking about how the culture had gone downhill over the last while!
Kontras
Where to start... The company, like many other tech companies, did layoffs throughout 2023. Some departures made sense, others didn't. Following those layoffs, though, they fired many individuals that were core to the team, and the company is still paying the price. For example, they fired the only pre-sales team member, and now the post-sales integrations/ product team has to join sales calls. They also fired the best CS leaders, who really cared about the people on our team and made work fun. As a result, they have lost other CS team members who finally had enough and have left for other (better) opportunities. Why fire those individuals you may ask? It simply came down to who the new COO liked and didn't like. She loves one team in particular, and if you're not on that team, she will be rude to you and will make you fear for your career, even calling you stupid in front of others (to be fair, I wasn't present in this meeting, but I heard about it... and who would lie about that?). As a result of her favoritism to that team, some members of that team have felt emboldened to be rude to their fellow GTM team members. Separately, the new COO also clearly has no idea how our product works, which feels pretty important to know if you're going to be leading the company. There's also a huge lack of transparency across the organization. We talk about how we are transparent, but then sometimes it takes months to find out that another team member was fired, or for follow up on discussions about compensation increases. Oh did I mentioned they told us that we're not getting raises unless we get promoted? Other GTM members had enough of that ridiculous reason and went elsewhere for the same title but an instant 20%+ pay increase. Lastly, we can't trust anything our product team says. It's a 50/50 on whether or not they will deliver. I get that there can be delays with development, that's fine, but when projects are constantly shifted and moved 6+ months away... how are we supposed to trust what the team says?