Pluspunten
Some of the best people I've ever had the pleasure of working with. Hopefully I'll have the pleasure of working with some of them again. I can't stress enough how great a group of people these are to work with.
Minpunten
It all comes down to the compensation package. While they offer competitive salaries, their total compensation is extremely poor. They offer health insurance, but only contribute a very small amount per month, leaving you to pay the rest out of your paycheck. That said, their health plan offerings are some of the worst and most expensive I've ever seen. For example, the plan I signed up for was not considered a high deductible health plan, and thus did not qualify for a health savings account, yet the deductible was $6000/year per person with 40% coinsurance. This is basically a catastrophic coverage plan. Yet it cost me over $8000/year out of pocket. They also only contribute minimally (if anything) to dental and vision insurance. They contribute nothing to LTD, STD, or anything else really. This all comes out of your paycheck. When bonuses were given, they were given in a flat structure. All employees received the same one thousand dollar bonus. Look, it's great to get any bonus and it's, well, "bonus" money. But even this could have been handled differently. Whether you were a secretary in Kansas or a Senior Engineer in NY, you got the same bonus. Whether you put in 80+ hour weeks trying to get the company's new product offering online, or you did the minimum 9-5 and shut off your phone on the way home, you got the same bonus. Why bother putting in the extra effort if everyone got the same bonus? It would have been nice to see merit based bonuses. Or even salary percentage based bonuses, since your salary took into account your worth to the company as well as your cost of living area. What could have been a great end of year motivator, just felt unfair and uninspiring. As far as the company's 401k, it recently got better with much cheaper and more competitive offerings. But, during the hiring process I was promised a 401k match was "soon" to be implemented. This never materialized. Because of this, the plan was not considered a safe harbor 401k plan. Which meant that many employees were not allowed to contribute the IRS maximum amount per year. You can google "safe harbor 401k" and "HCE excess contribution" for more information. Their most valuable, and consequently most likely to have other career prospects, employees were left with a substandard retirement offering. For paid time off, you got 15 days (combined sick and vacation). This is also far below the industry average. This is the first time I’ve ever worked for a company that offered less than 20, with most offering 25+. Some employees qualify for what the company calls “ETO” (earned time off). This seems to be only offered to employees who travel. They “earn” this time off by scheduling some sort of travel on non-business days. So a software engineer could be working nights and weekends trying to meet impossible deadlines to keep the company afloat and earn nothing. And then someone else could be sleeping on a shrewdly scheduled flight home and get an extra day off to use as they see fit later in the year. So, while the negotiated salary is competitive with the industry, you need to account for well over $25,000 in out of pocket and missing benefits. This leaves them far behind in the competitive field of software development.