Pros
- Great location if you live in Tri-Valley - On-site gym - Some chances to work on newer technology (mobile, Eclipse plugins) - Health insurance can be VERY comprehensive for not a lot of cash out-of-pocket. Really cheap drug co-pays. - Lots of good people, who know what they are doing and are good engineers. Everyone I've worked with is good natured and helpful.
Kontras
Day to day --------------- Unbelievably bureaucratic development process. There's a ton of overhead involved in just being able to check out and change one file. Managers must approve code checkins. Code reviews are done, but good luck getting your system set up to take part. Many internal tools were developed in-house, and it shows. Quality seems to be hit or miss, and is quite frankly, understaffed. Much work is done overseas, so if there's a problem blocking you, you're pretty much stuck until the next day. Strategy ----------- Lots of disarray when it comes to product strategy. Who is doing what? What are we doing? It seems to change every couple of months. There's a fine line between reacting to what customers/markets want and not sticking to a strategy long enough to see what works. There's also a sad lack of understanding of the target developers. Management ------------------ While I may be reporting an isolated case, there's lots of micro-management of day-to-day tasks. There are good managers here, but it's very uneven.