Pros
the fact that management is largely absent and clueless when not leaves a lot of time for drinking on the job and a deep-dive on your social-media platform of choice no project is expected to succeed so it is perfectly fine to fail hard and fail often you can pass the buck like a hot potato and there is always someone else to blame for your mistakes similarly if anything does succeed - by sheer force of stochasticity - there is always someone else around to take credit you can learn how small service providers scam their customers and partners so that when you join a larger company it is easier to spot red flags if you have friends you no longer want to speak to it is easy to get them a job here, after a few months they will never speak to you again. #winning
Cons
pay is abysmal unless you can get the execs into berghain/live next door to an investor 'putting the hours in' is good enough to earn praise even when the results are non-existent/catastrophic you are expected to lie to clients, cheat advertisers, publishers and partners salespeople and integration engineers have no technical knowledge so trying to get concrete requirements is like trying to pull teeth from a running bandsaw no focus on the core product (despite that being repeated like a mantra), instead random side projects and single-customer-specific features drain focus and energy GDPR is a dirty word