Pros
Great pay - while customer care jobs are notoriously underpaid, VRAI does a great job in this area. Every company says customer agents are invaluable because of how important retaining clients is; this was the first company I worked for that backed this up with a great wage. Remote work - helps promote a better work/life balance. Some good benefits - I found healthcare to be a great cost, with a grain of salt for my not having chronic health issues and could have more basic coverage. A caveat is that benefits are not as great as in the beginning and things are always being reduced/taken away. Some really great and talented colleagues - I'm still friends with many of my former colleagues and would work with them in a heartbeat.
Cons
Dwindling benefits - in my tenure, an employee match 401K was introduced and taken away within a year, health insurance costs increased for the same coverage, and our employee discount was lowered and a friends and family discount taken away completely. Before I had started, the employee discount was even larger and they had paid maternity leave; but no more. Internal operations are a mess - which makes it difficult to do your job (especially in CX but probably in a lot of departments). Examples: can never trust customer repairs will be completed, to be qc'ed, to be sent back to the correct address, and there are no timely responses for issues as it is all a big chain of emails to different people where hopefully someone will actually get the info or confirmation needed, and you can finally get back to the customer whos been waiting days. That last sentence isn't meant to talk badly of other VRAI employees, as we worked with outside jewelers as well; it's more that the system isn't working for the personalized, quick, empathic customer care VRAI wants of CX agents. It's really difficult to take care of the customer when you never know any of your attempts to fix a situation will actually be followed through on. Retention is low - Leaving departments severely understaffed in an already small start-up team. There's also a lack of accountability within the company as retention is blamed on the employees leaving rather than taking a look at the bigger issues. I was privy to a meeting where it was said people were leaving because they were never "right for VRAI", even though people leaving had been there a while and contributed greatly to the success of the company. Also, having no mentoring or growth opportunities for employees doesn't really make people stick around. For example, in CX, no one was going to be promoted to management, a "senior" title is the highest you can go. Upper management is a mess - while I was personally shielded from a lot by not being a department head, I was privy to some disparaging language via slack and in meetings toward employees from upper management. I also know departmental concerns (with evidence and data) were ignored because something else had already been decided and they just didn't want to backtrack or reconsider even if there was proof it wasn't to the benefit of the company, clients, and/or employees. Gaslightly company updates - Employees were always told via email or slack that the company was doing amazing and that we earned more money than ever, but then they took our employer match 401Ks away and lowered employee discounts within a couple of weeks. Make it make sense.