Zero micro-managing with the freedom to design and innovate without jumping through hoops - Engineer Prism Microwave Employee Review

Prism Microwave took a chance on me despite having an unorthodox educational background and little professional experience as a software engineer. Once hired, they provided me a ton of opportunity for personal growth, learning new programming technologies, and general freedom. They were awesome - they let me kind of do what I want technologically, as long as I showed up and made progress on the software I was responsible for building. They also provided great mentorship, including Darren Cutting and Wesley Sarratt, from whom I learned a ton about RF and software engineering. It was a very neat place to work - I built software drivers for testing equipment, programmed temperature chambers and network analyzers, and learned how to build RF matrices. I haven't had as much fun at a job since! Unfortunately, I didn't quite appreciate the freedom and how cool my upstream were until I got into "the real world" and learned how suffocating management and corporate environments can be. I wish I had had a better attitude... but hey, live and learn. One thing I won't ever forget: how nice my co-workers were there and how important the "community" was to them. We frequently went out for extended lunches (along with our managers) and got together outside of work.

It was a small company that had little oversight and required individuals to be self starters. Not for everyone.

The learning and growth opportunities given to me at Prism Microwave over the last year and half of my employment have been extremely gratifying. I came on board as a junior Software Engineer. That position, in many companies, translates into being constrained to working on maintaining legacy applications, quality analysis, and adding small features to existing applications. Rather than piling my plate with dull tasks that would have offered me little growth, my bosses at Prism Microwave placed me in charge of large-scale applications and interesting projects from the very beginning. They believed in my capability, and gave me ample time to complete these projects. The work environment is very relaxed. When I need to take time off, I'm often allowed to make up my time rather than having to take a PTO day. Building trust is imperative - since I've proven that I'm a hard worker, my boss trusts that I will make up my time when I say I will. The company often has BBQs during the day - always a fun experience and a nice break from the work day. Also, the environment is very friendly. Being a small company, the employees are mostly very close; we often go to lunch as a group as well as do happy hours after work.

Being a small company, employees are often expected to do long sprints on their own. Fellow engineers are usually happy to help when they can. However, they themselves are often busy. While this works well for people who are self-motivated and are good at figuring things out on their own, it might not work well for people who need or want a team-centric environment.