Pros
Software engineers are trusted, not micromanaged. Continuous improvement tends to be valued. Software quality tends to be valued. Opportunities to learn. Variety of programming languages. Salary is competitive and annual increases are reasonable. Salary levels and bonus ranges are somewhat transparent (translucent?). Annual bonus, 401(k), and stock-purchase program are amazing to the extent that they make it hard to leave. Employees can send each other gift cards via AppreciateHub. Overall the company is quite generous. Smart and helpful coworkers. The people are “T. Rowe Nice” with a few exceptions. Reasonable managers that tend to care. Tech aptitude is steadily increasing. Cloud-first. Building up nice developer tooling. Learning on the job. Gave up on SAFe. A lot of communication to employees. Started hiring more entry-level lately. Company’s financial products perform quite well. Decent extracurricular activities.
Cons
Variety of programming languages includes some that need to go away. Too much effort and time spent in certain internally built tools. Some bad software consulting decisions. Too much reliance on contractors (with lower technical standards), and pressure to convert them when max contact time reached, as some teams rely too much on them. Have to go back to the office 3d/w as business wants tech to be in the office. Doesn’t matter that many teams are split across geographic locations. Year-end reviews start in July and suck up a lot of time. Overreliance on metrics and incentives. Instead of doing what’s best for the company at times we worry about visibility of individuals for the sake of reviews and promotions. A lot of legacy code and low-performing teams from before we improved our hiring process. Security restrictions, some of which are reasonable but some which seem like a lack of trust, hinder development. “Open Q&A” sessions are highly moderated and many reasonable but hard questions don’t make it past moderation to be voted on. Too many balls in the air. Seems like the business could be more innovative and take more risks. With restricted flexibility it seems that those approved for WFH might be seen as less committed. The company taking sides in political issues is getting concerning. It feels like people of certain religious or political persuasions are not welcome in management positions. It’s possible to move teams but we can do it more and better. Hard to move up (and yet, too hierarchical). A lot of employee surveys, but hard to tell if leadership listens or takes action based on them. Too often employees leave the company, whom I have worked with or known but from other teams, and I don’t know until long after they’re gone.