Pros
I believe the company has been bought out twice, so here's what it used to be from 2019-2021: - small company, so you don't have to deal with corporate shenanigans or roadblocks that I have to deal with now with my current employer. I enjoyed this and it allowed me to learn a lot of different tests and instruments (mostly because lots of work with few hands to do it all). Nevertheless, I am very pleased with what I learned while working here. - If you learn quickly and do good work, you are given more opportunities to learn new things. I appreciate this looking back! Great way to build your resume and learn. - I was given the opportunity to come in and do overtime whenever I wanted, IF I wanted. I don't recall being asked to come in for overtime that I didn't volunteer for more than maybe twice. - 9/10 great coworkers! Disorganized management made it feel like we were in the trenches sometimes, but at least we were all a team and we got along well and were there for eachother. There were a couple of lazy people and sometimes you would see their work show up on your to do list, but that also depended on how much you allow. - small. "performance based" bonuses were given at the end of each year. - not sure if this this a pro, but yearly raises varied from 3-5% and were based on performance. Poor performance gets less than 3%, but I'm not sure if they award 10% to anyone besides management. Some other companies give 1-3% raises, so I'll leave this in the "pros" category I guess.
Cons
Some cons are wrapped into the pros, so please read both. I had an overall positive experience because I enjoy moderately fast-paced work, and technical work. In a perfect world, I probably would have stayed for maybe 6 to 8 more months to continue learning. - half of management was horrible. Not professional, proactive, or organized. seemed to prioritize their appearances and their own plans rather than actually managing (lots of companies are like this, so it's nothing rare. regardless, this is/was a problem) - inattentive management led to them not knowing what everyone can do/does, so the priorities and assignments sometimes didn't make sense. An example: People that completed their work slowly or didn't have a whole lot to do wouldn't get more work assigned, but the rest of us would. - At the time for hourly roles, they had a policy of an 8-5 M-F schedule . If you showed up early and stayed late between 7-6, this would not count for any overtime. They had a 1hr window on morning and evening, so essentially if you showed up 30min early so you could possibly leave 30min early, they did not see it that way. You had to be there before 8 and after 5. If you wanted OT, it would start at 6pm and go onwards. You donate an hour if you stay late but leave before 6. To me, that's messed up for an hourly role. - it's probably different now, but others complained that it used to be difficult to ask for vacation. I didn't experience this. - I don't wish to purse the management career path and I didn't want to deal with the way the place was managed for too much longer before earning what I would consider a good salary. So I didn't see many career opportunities for myself there. If you wanted to stick around for 3-5 years, you'd likely get promoted but the salary was not competitive when I was there.