Pros
the people. I love the people. Is it a mix? yep. I've been here longer than anyone else and I've seen them all come and seen them all go and I really miss many of you. I am a member of management and have watched how the changes have affected things here for many years. There is an open door policy. Anyone can talk to ANYONE here. you may be redirected to your leadership, but like any other chain of command, if you don't like the response you get from your manager, take it up a level. You will be challenged here. You will work with technologies you may not have played with before. You will be asked to get certified as part of your annual review process in some of those technologies. If you come in the door with a heavy strength in a skillset, you will be leaned on for that ability. And if you can teach or share that skillset, you will definitely be recognized and appreciated. Here is your basis for career advancement. Training and Certifications: We compensate you for all passed certifications, and we maintain a membership with a knowledgebase website for training on technologies for all our staff to access from anywhere. BYOD and working from home are two things that we do here at HQ that are pretty popular, but can cause management heartburn at times. You have to be able to do your job, and being billable are primary concerns for us. Everyone needs downtime, but working remotely for a customer can allow for a much more relaxed environment, especially at home. I'm really glad we're opening this door and expanding that ability. However, depending on customer needs and your role here, not everyone can participate unfortunately. We have good benefits: 401k, health, dental, vision, cell phone reimbursement, BYOD.
Cons
TEAMBUILDING is very important to many of us. I build my teams with a specific mindset and skillset in mind. I think that we lack in some teambuilding activities, but that happens because we tend to run lean on engineers, so EVERYONE is busy... not leaving much schedulable downtime. You have to be adaptable. I expect my team to trust their brothers and sisters and myself. I expect them to be able to depend on each other. You're sick? I'm gonna ask you if you will answer emails and still work from home so you don't lose a sick day/vacation day if I'm shorthanded or swamped that day and can swing a remote engineer on a project. You like working in a cubefarm on a 9 to 5er? You aren't going to get that very often. We have some FTE's that do that on a customers site, but most of our engineers are moving to a new location and a new challenge every week or so. I don't think the "groups" or the "cliques" affect my ability to do my job nor my teams ability to do their jobs. And if it does affect my teams ability, they better come tell me. You're here to do a job, and my job as a manager is to make sure that you can do it. How high you "rank" in the "cool kids club" has no bearing here and makes your case seem petty unless it somehow affects your ability to work.