Pros
Some highly talented people in engineering, recruiting, and middle management. A kind, smart, hardworking, and passionate founder team. A competitive product in the smallsat industry. Watching launches of your satellites is a rewarding experience. Seeing agile tools used so broadly across the organization is intriguing. There is a contingent that is trying to help the company grow correctly. Team lunches at the spectrum or lake forest were highlights. Generous amounts of free snacks.
Cons
The founder team has correctly identified the need for middle management and executive leadership, but they haven’t found the combination of skills that slows the company to take the next steps. The leadership team has a lot of ideas but consensus is elusive and often engineers get their projects and priorities disrupted which wastes time and is demotivating. Leadership seems to have overpromised to customers and believe they have to whip engineers to produce at wildly unrealistic timelines. I see too much management by intimidation and going behind people’s backs. I feel the founder team knows what’s best and has the heart of the engineers and middle management, and I wish there was leadership that amplified the founders’ attitude and vision. Also the time card policy was not my favorite.