This company loves to party! Lunches, award gather...

This company loves to party! Lunches, award gatherings, baby showers, happy hours, holiday parties, community service days, picnics, you name it-- in and out of the office these are fun folks who party as hard as they work. What's really cool is that the company Prez and VP love to hang, so you really get to know the folks you're working with. And everyone gets one work from home day a week, with more as needed due to shut downs or weather, which was great!

The downsides are purely subjective: The work site is made up of open plan room/offices in a windowless basement, employees hotel (no dedicated work spaces) yet are restricted to an assigned room to keep the teams together which makes sense but if you need a little quiet or want to have a quick meeting one on one it's not a great setup. In general the whole enterprise felt like a joyless sweatshop-- one of my coworkers joked pretty much on the daily that we needed a webcam pointed at the street so we could see the sun occasionally.

Lastly, employees aren't allowed to change teams, which was really unfortunate. I was constantly told to be proactive and take control of my projects and that I'd be supported in my goals but that was not the case. My supervisor seemed truly sorry to refuse my requests for training because 'the funding [wasn't] there', despite the fact that each employee is allotted an education budget that would have more than covered the free classes and seminars ranging from $50-$100 that I asked for. It was incredibly demoralizing to be made to feel like a hindrance when all I wanted was to learn and add value. Luckily other employees were wiling to share their expertise with me and help me grow.

Truly a mixed bag, but I'm glad I had the experience because it taught me what to look for in my next position.