Pros
Kiva Systems has the best blend of 1) Great technology- who else gets to build and deploy thousands of autonomous robots each year 2) Awesome people- some of the brightest people work here across Software, Performance, Manufacturing, Hardware, Design, Support, Deployment etc. and it's still small enough and under one roof so you get exposure to many different things. 3) Inspiring leaders/ managers- I've worked for two of the best managers in my career here at Kiva. It's a large company, but my experience has been top notch. Finally, the company is growing so quickly (headcount has more than doubled in the 3+ years I have been here) so there is always opportunity to grow. And now that we are an Amazon company, there are opportunities in the broader Amazon network.
Cons
We are growing fast, and the technology is evolving so quickly, this is not a 9-5 job. There is just so much to do that it's hard stop working at the end of the day. In some ways, I feel like Ford Motor back in the day thinking about all the cool features they could add to cars, and as Jeff Bezos says, it's still Day 1. Our technology also goes into warehouses which operate 7 days a week, so we have to have production ready technology. We are building out a lot of engineering and system support teams, so this will only get better, but we are not a R&D company making robots for trade shows. It also speaks to how advanced this company is with respect to robots being used for industrial applications.