Pros
Students seemed to like the seasonal work. Low-level employees are relatively sheltered from all the drama so I can see it being a nice place to start out.
Cons
You will be judged on how much you seem to be smiling, how many company extracurriculars you participate in, whether you make daily rounds to chit chat with everyone to show you are part of the "company culture," who you have lunch with, how many emails you send... the list goes on. The quality of your work really doesn't matter aside from numbers - whoever sends the most emails/makes the most calls/does the most [x] wins! Be prepared to be berated to the point of tears over whether you smiled enough in a meeting or had negative body language or go to the bathroom too often, etc. Experienced this personally and saw it happen to others over and over. Really loud workplace at times because being a social butterfly is encouraged and headphones are bad. Plus, people will play music out loud, yell to each other across the office, mumble to themselves, etc. It all really depends on your role - sales, marketing, editing, etc. - because some are respected by the CEO while others are basically considered a waste of space (which is why there was no HR) Overall, this was the most toxic, degrading, demoralizing, and negative work environment I have experienced. We were encouraged to tattle on coworkers and supervisors were encouraged to "deal with" those deemed contrary to the "company culture." Hiring practices in the past have included unsavory behavioral "tests" such as telling someone they did not receive the job just to see how they react (if you didn't put up a protest then obviously you didn't want it enough). It is sad because there really have been some great people at Cognella and the work itself is enjoyable. But if you are an experienced worker, just avoid this place. Cognella is like when your sibling would grab your hand and make you smack yourself, saying "why are you hitting yourself? why are you hitting yourself?"