Pros
I am not aware of anyone to have been physically abused at work. The offices have presumably passed workplace safety and fire inspections. I have never heard of any incidents of failure to deposit paychecks that were owed to employees. There are snacks and drinks readily available.
Cons
If you are reading this, you are likely considering working here. I’m not going to tell you that you shouldn’t, because I don’t know you. But, you should do your due diligence and read the experiences of others and imagine yourself working here. You can start by taking a look at the negative reviews and compare them to the positive reviews--does it seem odd that the negative reviews tend to be very thorough and detailed, while the positive reviews are short, vapid platitudes? Filter the reviews by Software Engineer. Does it seem plausible to you that the positive reviews were artificially extracted out of interns and new hires who have no experience to accurately judge the environment or say anything of substance? You should consider if such an HR practice is objectionable to you on ethical grounds or not, and if you would feel comfortable being asked to do deceptive things like this habitually through your career. While on the topic of duplicitous behavior, it’s important for you to consider the degree of confidence you have in any job description, or project description you may have received, and whether it would bother you to learn that the reality significantly deviates from your expectations. Would it bother you if three months from now, the project that you started working on were handed off to an offshore team on the other side of the planet, while you and your teammates are separated and distributed to other random projects? How would you feel about having to join late night meetings to train your offshore replacements, who have no familiarity with the technology or the architectural and design patterns you used? What if the “flex-time” you were promised manifests in reality as 12AM-3AM conference calls, and 16 hour workdays 7 days a week, for weeks, or months? Maybe this doesn’t bother you, maybe you’ve negotiated a salary sufficient to justify such risks--these are just considerations for you to evaluate. Salary, of course, is an important consideration. At first glance, it might seem like the salaries are in accord (or maybe even competitive) with the local market. However, it’s important to compare apples to apples when you make your final decision, and you should come up with a fiscal value for various aspects of a work environment to quantify all factors and arrive at a final number. Are you expecting to work 9-5, 40 hour weeks? Calculate your hourly rate--what would be the total salary if you were habitually required to work 60+ hour weeks? What if you had to spend weeks filling out forms and documents, and going through committee reviews and ticketing systems before you are allowed to use an industry-standard open-source technology on a project? Would that be a neutral, positive, or negative experience for you? What monetary value would you ascribe to such a work experience? What if you were forced to use 15-year old technology instead since it's already been approved? How do you feel about using deprecated versions of third party libraries from a decade ago in support of legacy software solutions? Would an extra $100/month be sufficient juice for the squeeze to stagnate professionally? How about an extra $200/month for adopting known industry anti-patterns and bad practices into the way that you create software? What would it take for you to stay motivated if you are told to build something that no customers want, but will be forced to buy through government contracts awarded via lobbying efforts? Think hard. Maybe a free mediocre lunch that takes 25 minutes of standing in line is fair recompense; maybe the idea of turning r/programminghorror into a karma mine for yourself puts a smile on your face? Each person is different. All I can tell you is that there’s a high turnover rate as good people leave (unless they are trapped here by H1B visa sponsorship), and positions remain open for months (frequently they expire/are closed to save face without being filled). Maybe you’re the hero to save one of those positions from expiring?
