Pros
- Good pay, standard benefits
- Excellent location at King & University (close to bus routes & highway, lots of lunch options, etc)
- Nice office (decoration, layout, etc)
- Decent culture and social atmosphere
- CEO is experienced, well connected and charismatic
- 5% Employee Trust to be paid out if there's a buyout or IPO
- Good opportunity for researcher types
Cons
- Sometimes it felt like the company lacked focus and other times it felt like the company was focused on the wrong thing.
- Founder is very intelligent BUT also very non-technical. Trying to nail down requirements was often difficult.
- Management spent enormous amounts of money to build an elaborate product without ever checking the market to see if there were any customers
- the Employee Trust is just a carrot on a stick... which only benefits employees who happen to be around for a buyout/IPO (which I don't see happening soon -- if ever)
- Senior management did a road trip to see VC's and big companies in Silicon Valley and nothing came from the trip. But at the time lots of semantic technology companies were being bought left and right.