Pros
My 4.5 years at Synapse offered a lot of growth and the chance to work with many amazing people. The culture is down-to-earth, humble, kind, and ambitious. People in the SF office (and Seattle, too, although I worked in SF) put a lot of effort into making it a fun place to work. Pros were variety in the types of projects and clients, and mostly meaningful work. You usually have a say in what projects you work on (or don't work on). For engineers, the skill progression is well-thought out and measured, and there's a good emphasis on engineering consulting skills as well. My managers were always attentive, eager to make sure I had what I needed, and challenged me in the best ways. On a day-to-day basis, it feels like you're part of a smaller company than you actually are in terms of impact and personal connection, which I liked. In my experience, leadership cares a lot about what employees value. I valued that my contributions to work outside of project work (employee groups, organizing events and initiatives, and writing articles for company blog) were recognized.
Cons
Sometimes there's the feast-or-famine side of project work because of being a consultancy. Being part of Capgemini Invent does help to smooth that out. That brings me to the other downside, which is that in the final 6 months to year of my time there, the Capgemini integration was happening, and some systems and processes were starting to feel more corporate (which I personally didn't like).
