Pros
Free bagels. Some friendly people. Building was downtown, so commute is easy. Not much more to say than that.
Cons
You had a small amount of people that "got it", otherwise, for the most part, a good deal of the people were clueless. Working long hours does not translate into understanding how things work (sadly, this is the case in most IT shops, not just in this company). Also, having an attitude does not translate into being a good programer. You have these young groups of people, who don't understand basic computing principals and they get to decide the direction of the infrastructure. Most of the computing could be done relatively cheaply, but then , things are so overly complicated that the next stop is always the big -iron solution (exadata was beyond overkill). Overall, it was hip, it was happening, but sadly, clueless. Lucky for them, they make so much $$$ , that they can literally throw money at solving problems.
