You'll be one of the cool kids, until mom & dad decide you aren't so cute any more and they send you away.
Pros
Sometimes is the "cool place to work", especially if you are the flavor of the month. If you want to meet some really neat people, make some friends, and learn about the dark underworld of movie encoding, this is a pretty good place for that. Working here is a labor of love for which everyone takes a pay cut. Sometimes you will get to do what you are good at, and sometimes you will get credit for it. If you want to test a crazy new haircolor, this is the time for it as this is the only company I know where you can get props for having a purple mohawk and tats, biking to work at 11 am, and going surfing for two hours at lunch. The place is jam-packed with great, eccentric, wild people who mean really well and are supercool (or super geeky) to happy hour with. Like another reviewer said, it really helps if you surf or party with the boss... but only at first. The underlying belief, I think, for management in their hiring and organizational decisions is that "anyone can do any job if they are smart," so this is great if you want a crack at something in which you have no experience or knowledge.
Cons
Back to that underlying principle here that "anyone can do it", the downside of it is that everyone thinks that even a monkey can do your job, and that it has nothing to do with anything you have learned or who you are. Overall, the company has very unpredictable politics and favoritism, no career path, no professionalism (no respect for your knowledge, experience, or skills set; your coworkers will likely be folks who have never held a serious, traditional corporate job or had to prove themselves at a professional level). If you want to beef up your resume, finally get to "do things right," complete some accomplishments for your career, or just collect a decent salary and coast along for a while, don't count on any of that. Although most of DivX is motivated by the best of intentions, because of that "anyone can do it" mentality, there is no consistent way to earn your kudos here, and somehow "marketing" yourself is one of the only sure (but temporary) things. If you don't own the random look, attitude, and prepackaged persona that would look "cool" on their company bio at that time in the company's mood swings, then consider anything you do professionally to be pretty much worthless and overlooked. This can be incredibly frustrating and insulting and your career will fizzle temporarily. It won't matter how good you are at what you do, how hard you work, how much you know or care about your job, or how right you are about how to make something better, you will someday lose favor (assuming you had it at some point), at which time you will be ignored and then sacked without warning because they decided to replace you with some other monkey (or end your position entirely). I saw this happen to every last one of my coworkers and myself, and most of them went on to much better paying jobs where they were challenged, respected, and nurtured as professionals. Also, although you might get reimbursed for a laptop (so you can set up a slingbox and work from a yam-powered trampoline boat as you sail around the world and videoblog to their latest video sharing community site), getting any additional job-related training or software to do your job will be nearly impossible. Most of us figured out that in this case, "shareware" and "freeware" were the operative words.
