Pros
Exciting industry. Impressive clientele. Fun and supportive colleagues. All the coffee you can drink (not too bad). Great department Director (initially).
Cons
- Management is inexperienced and cut-throat. Very two-faced; lots of talk of open-door communication and head-nodding, but nothing ever taken seriously until staff complains or leaves. There was a period (over at least six months) where staff would return from lunch to find their reporting managers and leads (who were the qualified and supportive ones) were quietly let go. In turn they promoted unambitious long-term staff with no experience to take over responsibilities and roles they are not suited for. Not all departments though, some have great staff, but majority. Morale spiraled down very quick resulting in mass exodus of good staff. - Very cheap: skimps on everything from benefits and pay, to office supplies. Yet they would pump all these efforts and budget into hiring inflated directors and consultants to "improve" business. Company is horribly run. - Lots of over-time and fluctuating schedules, which was expected. Very hard on personal life and general health. - Minimal effort into making coding and development more robust and scalable; instead had a number of "teams" all writing their own code to do similar tasks for each project. Lots of bugs discovered post-deployment by clients, especially during live events; embarrassing.