Pros
Amida is centrally located in DC, which makes getting into work from almost anywhere a breeze. The kitchen was always stocked with lots of snacks. The projects there are generally really interesting and challenging in the best way. Pay is pretty good for the industry, although I did not make even close to the amount that was advertised for the job. Benefits are alright. Flexible schedule was pretty nice. Really talented and wonderful coworkers.
Cons
I walked into Amida on my first day excited and ready to work on the impressive projects I had heard about in my interview. Within a month, I was already unhappy working there. By the time I decided to leave, I dreaded reading any email from the CEO and coming into work every day. The CEO is the worst thing about Amida, which is unfortunate since he makes it very clear he doesn't plan on selling the company or changing anytime soon. He creates an unnecessarily stressful work environment by setting unrealistic expectations for perfection given quick and frequently changing deadlines, which wouldn't be as bad if he held himself to the same standards. Unexpectedly working nights and weekends is pretty standard, praise and appreciation is expected when he doesn't email or call you during your time off, and all-caps urgent and/or angry emails are not uncommon. To give you a further idea of atmosphere, the employees would talk about being in the CEO's war path. You would be fine for a couple of weeks, then make one small mistake, and for the next week or two everything you did would be scrutinized. Make any mistake during that time, and you should expect to be talked down to at the very least, if not yelled at outright. Verbal abuse is often personal and demeaning and happens both in person and via more all-caps emails. Amida has responded to other negative reviews here by saying that the employees can express their concerns any time, but I found this to be untrue firsthand. After putting in my notice, the CEO barely even made eye contact with me, let alone attempting to talk with me about why I was leaving. I would chalk it up to apathy except that he did go behind my back and ask my coworkers if they knew why I was leaving. It should also be noted that the 1 and 2 stars found on here are very poorly received on the CEO's end, to the point that he pressures current employees into finding out who wrote them and a couple have been taken down by their posters even in the time since I've left. And rather than address the problems mentioned in the poor reviews, there's also a lot of pressure from the CEO for current employees to write good reviews since Amida is trying to bring more people onto their team. In fact, I only felt compelled to write this review after reading the three good reviews posted within a couple of days of each other (clearly guided by the pressure to get some good reviews up). It is unnecessarily insulting and dishonest to say that the people who have written bad reviews are lazy or that we were naive enough to expect a 30 hour work week at any tech company, but especially a startup which never claimed to have less than 40 hour weeks. I left because I was constantly stressed and unhappy, and looking through the reviews I'm certainly not the only one. Until the CEO steps down or starts treating people better, I would avoid even considering applying here.