Pros
Fun people, good mission. Lots of beer and outside of work activities.
Cons
Despite all the enigmatic, cult-leader CEO claims to say about wanting to make Kanso the best place to work, it has become a living nightmare. Scope and priorities change with the CEO's mood of the day, or whichever client is complaining the loudest. Lots of whispers about how we're about to break into a huge market and all become fabulously wealthy are heard...but nothing will materialize. Management claims the path to the next huge project is just a small set of features, but in private, maintains a list of about 20-30 features that is actually required. The legacy code is badly done and complex, and most of the developer's time is spent patching and working around the antipatterns to support production. They only hire friends and family, most of which have zero experience in the software world, so process is nonexistent and the place is chaotic. Software veterans who join think they can implement best practices and tidy things up, but huge egos prevent any meaningful changes from occurring. Constructive criticism is seen as defecting from the cult. The most painful aspect of Kanso software right now is the recent death of their brilliant CTO. The very next day after his death, the CEO addressed the company and said we can keep him alive by working on his code. I was shocked at this callous, self-serving, manipulative tactic. Now all management has made the choice to use his death as a rallying cry to push their employees to make deadlines. Everyone who knew the CTO knows how much he would detest that. Avoid this place at all costs.
