Went from great to average in 8+ years
Pros
- A pro that doesn't have a caveat is hard to come up with. - Remote friendly for the most part, but don't expect travel dollars. - Newly created ESPP (better late than never and the result of equity grants being eviscerated) - Benefits relatively standard. Nothing sticks out. - Opensource, although you can work in opensource in many companies - Lots of training available. If you are at a site, you can get all the training/certifications you want for free as long as the classroom has space. But there are no travel dollars for this. If you are remote, this is somewhat of a con. There is a fairly large amount of online training, but nothing that will lead to a cert. - Smart tech people, but there are smart people everywhere. - The shutdown days have been made into company holidays, so you don't have to burn PTO and essentially get 4 more days off. The con on this is that if you carry over PTO into the following year, you must use it by Feb 15th. If you don't use it, you lose it. Yeah, this is actually a con for many people. - Easy to get promoted up to senior level. Promotions are a dime a dozen at the lower levels. Everybody gets promoted. I've seen some people get promoted who really shouldn't be. Principal level is harder, but the domain you work in can make the principal promotion easier. For example you would have to almost be Torvald's deputy to get a principal promotion in kernel space. See cons.
Cons
- Equity grants practically non-existent now. No longer have a new hire grant. Retention grants may hit 1 out of 10 employees now and they are so small as to be about $2000 in stock per year. Likely the driver for the new ESPP program. - Many management new hires from large behemoth companies. They don't fit here and have created a management versus worker mentality rather than the previous one team mentality. It's ironic because they bring the stuff that didn't work from their old jobs and make Red Hat like the company they left. The "old-timers" who have been promoted to management still walk the talk, but are pressured by these new people and all the junk/process they bring with them. - Strange PTO policy. After 5 years you get 3 more days, 10 years another 3 more. - There is favoritism. Buddies get the promotions, the money, and the opportunities. - Low pay. No formal salary merit increase policy. Your salary used to be reviewed every June, but no more. Seems to be just whenever your manager feels like it. So if you have a cost cutting penny pincher new hire manager from one of those large companies, chances are you won't see an increase and are underpaid. I've heard it may be an 18 mo cycle now, but haven't seen evidence that it's in operation. Besides why 18 months versus a standard 12 month year? - There is talk that the bonus could go the way of the equity grants. Sounds like something Frank would want and since he is gone now, this may not materialize. - No promotion path after principal. Very few senior principals+ in engineering and non-existent in the support side of the house. The unfortunate result is there is no career path after principal. I've seen quite a few top level people (committers and the like) leave and this along with the other cons is why (particularly the culture change from the new managers). - Used to get the tools to do our jobs. No longer do development/tech employees get workstations. You used to get a laptop and a workstation, but no longer. You get a laptop. The result is people self fund their hardware. Likely the change was some great idea from one of the new managers.
