Pros: Engineer culture. Work-life balance.

Cons: Learning curve. Proprietary programming language.

Pros: You learn early on about "Arista culture": everybody can contribute everywhere they feel capable. You are also encouraged to initiate direct contact with the right people in the company to get input on problems you're working on (and there are a lot of really smart people). There is no more than the bare minimum of hierarchy or bureaucracy to deal with. There are separate teams, but you aren't limited to working on one thing (other than by your available time). You are encouraged to move around to different projects as you learn more and interests change. Your performance is evaluated primarily by your peers, using a nerdy data-driven approach, while managers provide sober second thought. The company itself is doing great things and poised for greater still. It delivers a product people love in an industry that's growing like crazy, and equity compensation gives you a stake in it.

Cons: The Burnaby office location is not the greatest for taking transit to work. Software is largely written in an arcane proprietary TACC language, which has some technical advantages but is mostly used for historical reasons or inertia. The codebase is managed by Perforce, which makes tracking history and making small, nimble changes a chore—though there are ongoing efforts to improve developer tooling, including Git integration.

Pros: Decent salary, amazing work environment filled with great coworkers, constantly learning new stuff and getting other people's help.

Cons: My current office in Vancouver is in the middle of nowhere. The pay could be better, and the onboarding seems way too long and has too much stuff.