Pros
My overall impression so far is that Coventor has a very healthy work culture, a clear idea where they want to go as a company, and management with the leadership skills, strong technical background, and smart business strategies to move it forward.
A few highlights:
- Coventor motivates employees to work with commitment and honesty, and hires very talented people. Everybody's friendly and supports each other's work as able, and there's general enthusiasm about the product. People are welcome to ask questions and suggest ideas, and criticism and other feedback are delivered in a respectful and encouraging manner.
- The company cares about their customers (senior directors seem good at prioritizing customer feedback and requests with each software release).
- Hours are reasonable (I think there's the occasional late day every so often, but normally it's a standard 8-9 hours). Managers respect their employees' vacation time, sick days, and working hour preferences (people arrive anywhere between 7 and 10am, as they need or prefer to).
- My boss is great about supporting/leading our team well, especially if we have concerns, need help from a different office, or if we have questions or suggestions.
- You can be pretty self-motivated/independent in your work if you want to, as long as you're delivering what's needed (no overly micromanaging behavior that I've noticed), yet people are very available to help if you have questions, concerns, or need direction.
- There seems to be plenty of room to grow professionally, both with training in new skills and with taking on more responsibility over time as the company grows.
Other pros: salaries are very fair, matching 401(k), really good health insurance plan, ability to work from home sometimes, flexible hours
Cons
I guess the only con I can think of is that there are sometimes a lot of meetings, and company policies can get a bit confusing (due to a recent acquisition by Lam Research).