Pros: A high degree of personal ownership in projects means that if you're on a solid team, you can contribute almost immediately.

Cons: Serious issues with reinventing the wheel, neglecting useful open-source alternatives, and in many places completely ignoring proper software development practices like continuous integration, unit testing, integration testing, etc. Proprietary everything means your skills are largely not transferable.

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 and great company parties. Having a TV studio in the building meant occasional celebrity sightings.

Cons: Long hours, usually worked until 8 p.m., and I was too worn out to do anything after work. Senior management would sometimes tell us that we needed to stop working so hard, but it was just lip service. The culture and the project deadlines required constant long hours. I felt guilty leaving at 6 p.m. 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 two years I was there, I trained five temporary consultants. So, instead of building a team, all that training just went to completing their short-term project, then they were gone.

Pros: Workload is balanced with personal life. Learn many CS and financial knowledge. Free courses. Free food.

Cons: not fully match my background and interests.