Pros
I had the fortune to work with some excellent people. The office culture was very friendly. My team worked very well together and accomplished goals and completed tasks in an efficient manner and with a great deal of quality. The office was beautiful and modern. The work/life balance was excellent. I was not required to work overtime with little to no crunch. The product is very innovative. It is genuinely an amazing and unique product with many applications. Due to the nature of the product, working on it can be very challenging but also rewarding.
Cons
Unfortunately, the company is micromanaged by the founder and president. While the founder has average technical ability and a decent eye for innovation, his leadership skills fall short. He lacks a cohesive vision and as such, the company direction shifts frequently and quickly with every whim. For instance, he may feel like opening a new satellite office is a great idea and do it only to realize 6 months later that he does not like it and closes it. Similarly, his expectations change but you will not be notified of this shift in expectations. Expect to be micromanaged. There is no room for your ideas as an employee. Think of this job as a contract position in which the client is the founder and you must do everything exactly as he requires; however, these requirements are not clear and change very rapidly (almost on a daily basis). The company has a high rate of turnover due to the above reasons as everyone learns the founder issues sooner or later. In fact, almost the entire engineering team left at the same time as I did and the same thing had happened the previous year to the previous engineering team.
