Pros
Work life balance Great social activities in the office and even team building days IF there is budget Getting a brand new Macbook device Flexibility when it comes to having to solve issues during office hours Most of the people are really nice and you can have truly meaningful conversations If you're lucky enough, you will have a direct manager to whom you can really express your frustrations and they will try to help if possible (but as I said you need to get real lucky to be in their teams) People are generally helpful Relaxed atmosphere at work Cool office in nice Amsterdam location, but pretty basic and missing private rooms or boots to have calls Again if you're lucky, there are some really amazing clients out there to work for via AND Diverse environment, except in the tech lead level
Cons
When redundancies happened in the UK, the news were announced ad hoc and suddenly nobody could be able to get a promotion or any salary increase, regardless of people actually being scheduled for one in the upcoming days All the bigger fun activities and refunds for trainings or certifications were the first ones to go, when there were budget cuts, so it feels like most of the employees didn't even have the chance to enjoy one of the main cool points of this company or they enjoyed it for too short Some people in management are really not transparent and it feels like you can't count on them to give a sincere answer or actually help you Some client project feel like a joke, just to cash in some money The engineering skills are very much missing, if you're stuck in a really deep technical problem with the client, there's nobody able to help you The CEO and UK higher up managements seems seriously unaware of any market trends and possibilities in the Netherlands, so it's really hard to get clients here The quota they ask clients for developers is ridiculously high for junior devs, therefore it's really hard to place them with clients. No serious company is willing to pay as much for a junior or entry level dev as they would for a mid-senior dev, when they can go to competitors and hire cheaper senior devs Developers are way too underpaid, according to the market standards and there's no distinction between more difficult engineering tracks and less difficult ones. This is why some people end up doing really difficult tech work and get the same compensation as people that have less exhausting work to do The quality of the technical interview seems to have decreased in the past year or more, so you end up with people being on the same payment scale and level but having way too different performance capabilities Promotion and progression system is kind of a joke. I believe it is fundamentally wrong for a technical person that wants to get a salary increase to have to spend quite a significant amount of time participating in activities that benefit the club, either not technical at all or irrelevant to their career path, just to collect bullet points for their case and feedbacks along the way. There should be more flexibility in this process, so that everyone regardless of their role at AND can choose a path to focus on, and as long as their are able to prove with facts that they are up for the next level, they should have the chance to a promotion.