Intern - Intern Pelican Imaging Employee Review

Pelican offers a rare opportunity these days - a place to work on new, innovative technology with a highly skilled and experienced team. Its a joy to work with some of the brightest minds in the industry - the team's passion is contagious and rubs off on you right away. For me, the 'work hard, play hard' work/life balance is ideal.

One problem that isn't so obvious with working with so many brilliant minds is that they always have great new ideas - but sometimes you have to say no to new ideas to develop and ship the existing ideas. Having the discipline needed to define & focus on a shipping a product is something Pelican could do better moving forward.

Management doesn't hover over engineers, but gives them the freedom to "do their thing". Lunch is provided three days a week, with a well-stocked kitchen for other times. Monthly beer-bashes, contests, and occasional off-site team-building fun keeps everyone talking -- for instance, we had a "friends-and-family" open house with a taco truck and a margarita machine; a wine-tasting contest; lunches watching World Cup; and an active foosball table! There are no specific personal-time or vacation limits -- I can take a few hours off for personal business just by sending an e-mail. Management insists on you keeping a good personal life balance. Good pay; excellent benefits plan includes health FSA and really good medical insurance. The stock options offered were well above average. A lot of cross-pollination occurs with people on one team helping another team. I get the opportunity to learn new technologies and put them to use. There is no ageism here. Excellent location -- the office park at the train station across from Santa Clara U -- for commuting CalTrain, ACE Train, Capital Corridor, plus free bus to VTA Light Rail and SJC airport.

Turnover with employees (and friends) leaving for other positions (but what do you expect, if you are offered a CTO position?). Company runs on the lean side employee-wise. Scrum methodology semi-adopted but not really performed. Tasks and stories ill-defined (you, the engineer, actually get to flesh out the spec while you are designing).