Pros
Rapidly growing company, little competition, not a "PC" culture, decent 401k matching, decent health insurance. Some really cool people.
Cons
From an engineering perspective, the code base is absolutely horrendous spaghetti code written over ~9 years that has never been refactored. The framework offers things like threading and async programming, but why use it when you can write it yourself in a more confusing way and rely heavily on reflection. Honestly it seems like whoever wrote the early iterations of this code was trying to provide job security, because it is so hard to understand in some places. As a result, the 6GB of legacy code is essentially all tribal knowledge between 2-3 people that you have to pull-teeth to get a half-baked response to any question you ask, if you're lucky to get a response at all. The front-end code and database stored-procedure code is in just as bad of shape as the back-end. Every company talks about having tech-debt, but this is beyond anything imaginable. The "vision" is that the new framework is much better, and while it offers scalability, there is very little thought put into the overall architecture patterns and often you'll find that it wasn't developed to be generic or accomodating to future additions, only lazily built to get the job done at that moment in time. Most of the "senior" developers here have had very little experience at any other companies, so they continually approve bad code without knowing better ways to do things. If you try to question their way of thinking, they'll just ignore you. If they break your tests, they expect you to fix them. If they implement code standards they expect you to follow them, while they ignore them. They expect you to write tests for new features you build, but don't expect them to worry about writing any. More than once I was met with hostility because I had to modify code someone else had written and they were being territorial about it. Are you familiar with the phrase "Rules for thee, but not for me"? ... well that phrase came to mind weekly while I was working here. The CTO manages hiring and he seems to lean heavily on a glorified horoscope ("personality") quiz paired with a logic test. Management constantly stresses only hiring "the best of the best" and are working with every hiring agency in the midwest, yet they struggle to even hire 2 developers in a year despite getting dozens of resumes weekly. Likely because anyone who miraculously gets to the offer stage is only met with a pitiful low-ball, lackluster benefits and a car salesman attitude of high pressure tactics to get a decision immediately. Much of upper management were previously car salesmen and it's very clear once you spend some time around them. As a result of the terrible hiring practices and reluctance to pay a market wage, almost all new development has been outsourced to external companies working out of India, Belarus and Poland. Since I've left, the outsourced team has likely grown to be at least twice the size of the in-house team and there's no indication that it will stop growing. The main "senior" developers are each expected to manage multiple offshore teams, which was leading to very little oversight of the code being merged in from the offshore teams and no noticable improvement in code quality. Management has somehow convinced everyone that offshore developers are the best decision and the future of the company. Another big issue is the blatant divide between the two offices. Remember the tribal knowledge, "senior" developers and hiring manager mentioned above? Well they all exist in the Indiana office, so you're fighting an uphill battle if you're in STL. What I noticed was an incredible amount of military-style micromanaging by the CTO, a general lack of respect and trust for anyone in STL, and a goal to make anything that STL has been tasked with as difficult as possible. This often came in the form of constantly changing requirements or taking weeks to get code-complete features through QA and released. Looking at the big picture, it almost seemed like Indiana is threatened by the thought of the CEO moving the engineering team to STL and they are protecting themselves at all cost. If you're a developer that likes team autonomy, logical development decisions or a fast moving environment, this is absolutely not the place for you. You'll also notice the "unspoken benefits" are much better if you're in Indiana. The other comments on here are spot on. Many new hires were either fired without warning or left within a year, often for reasons relating to the behavior of upper management. The engineering culture is very much a "bro club" and the overall company culture is a "family" unless you don't fit in. The profit sharing will only be worthwhile if you've been with the company for a very long time. Management is abysmal at being transparent or relaying information to employees, so usually people are left in the dark. If you're interviewing at DriveCentric, my advice to you is to find some ex-employees on social media and reach out to them about their experiences. I'd recommend asking anyone who was previously a developer, DBA, UX designer, or QA what their experiences were (only because the other staff are mostly shielded from the dysfunction). It's easy to dismiss what you see on Glassdoor as a disgruntled, one-off experience....but if you talk to a enough people you'll start to notice some patterns about what to expect if you get hired here.
