Pros
- The mission was legit interesting and the problems were fun to think about.
- A lot of the people were smart, motivated, and good teammates.
- You got a ton of autonomy if you were ok with figuring everything out yourself.
- The training budget was real. Conferences and courses were actually supported.
Cons
- Leadership and planning were all over the place. There was a pattern of sprinting after new opportunities, then not staffing the follow through, so the same half started efforts kept piling up.
- There was not much HR, Ops, or real middle management. Engineers and PMs ended up doing IT, procurement, onboarding offboarding, and random admin just to keep work moving.
- Turnover was constant and backfills were rough. Senior roles got replaced with junior hires or interns, but expectations did not change, so knowledge disappeared and the same issues repeated.
- Benefits were pretty thin. No 401k, and cost cutting was always in the background.
- The business leaned heavily on federal funding, so volatility was a big deal. When the government shutdown happened, the company was not ready. Layoffs left skeleton crews, scope stayed basically the same, and shifting senior roles to contractor setups made everything feel uncertain.