Pros
Potential for a higher salary if the CEO picks you as a favorite.
Cons
- No remote work at all, except for extremely limited circumstances. - Insultingly low pay for new employees. Managers have to fight for every dollar that goes to their employees. - No benefits, at all. No health insurance, disability insurance, no HSA, dental insurance, or literally any other benefit. - Heartless leadership. Four employees and the entire roster of interns were fired on a holiday. Many of those employees required US employment as a stipulation for their visas. - Beyond untrustworthy CEO. Routinely, he would make a "rock solid" promise and when reminded would deny and get hostile at the idea of following through. It occurred frequently enough that I began taking detailed notes whenever speaking with him, and signed and dated the notes to prove that he had made a commitment. Additionally, I had to get all communications in a written form from him through email and internal messaging so that I would have solid proof of his tendency to lie. - The CEO will lie whenever it is convenient for him. When I initially interviewed for the company, I was told by the CEO that the position would be hybrid when the probation period ended. When the probation period ended, he flatly denied the hybrid request. His response that delivered with a smile is this direct quote "the business can change the work agreement at any time for any reason." - Micromanagement by the CEO. He would on a near daily basis attempt to override a manager's decision on how their employees should work. Team members would get shuffled repeatedly to the point where 9 people were hired for a product team and 7 were moved immediately to different areas on their first day. - No time for training. The software is incredibly intricate, and new team members are expected to train, demo the system to election officials, and improve the system far before they are ready. - Developers do not speak English and are based in China. Communication is excruciatingly difficult with them, even more so with the time difference. Due to the lack of English language skills and the complexity of the software, developers would misinterpret business requirements and botch the execution. If the same people were based locally to alleviate the time delay issues and had stronger English skills, I do not believe there would be a development issue. - The foreign developers had direct access to US data, which employees were instructed to hide from customers. Every contract included language regarding data transmission and there is a very high chance that they were violated. - Potential legality issues. The CEO asked me on several occasions to break the law. I mentioned how illegal the requests were, and they were usually dropped. This also played a significant role in why I kept signed and dated notes after my interactions with him.