Great Minds, Strong Work Ethic, Room for Growth, Plenty of Training, and Long Hours
Pros
This is the kind of place where you feel honored to be among the smart people working here. Lots of opportunity for advancement and to learn both formally and informally. Very cool perks like free admission into any museum you can think of, great company parties, etc. Having a TV studio in the building meant occasional celebrity sightings.
Cons
Long hours, usually worked until 8 pm and was too worn out to do anything after work. Senior Management would sometimes tell us that we need to stop working so hard, but it was just lip service. The culture and the project deadlines require constant long hours. You feel guilty leaving at 6pm. There seemed to be a lack of organization at the team lead and management levels which trickled down to the developers. The open work environment basically meant constant interruptions. It was hard to focus and get anything done until the end of the day when most people had gone home. On the other side of training is the unofficial requirement to spend time training new developers. Normally, when building a team this is a good thing, but in the 2 years I was there, I trained 5 temporary consultants. So, instead of building a team, all that training just went to completing their short term project, then they were gone.