Pros
The main attraction with Pelican Imaging is its core idea: The array camera used to compute a depth map for an image. If realized well, the core idea opens up countless opportunities and applications. The company's challenge is to execute on implementation of this core technical idea.
Cons
To job seekers: One of the major engineering challenges for Pelican is technical debt and legacy code. While the company portrays itself as research-focused and a software startup, the bulk of Pelican's code can be characterized as legacy code. (someone in the engineering team used the quite appropriate expression "Fortran with semicolons"). This is not code you will want to work on. The cause is obvious: Scientists untrained in modern software engineering practices are using C/C++ to develop imaging algorithms; their research code is then taken over directly by software engineering with disastrous consequences. Think two million lines without OO design, without exception handling, without parameter validation, without results verification. Add an almost desperate need to deliver on overpromised deadlines to hardware partners and it's not hard to understand why the output is a complete patchwork. To the credit of the team (despite engineering managementt), recent builds work amazingly well. Now, about Engineering management: This is not people you will want to work for. They will decide the first week if they personally like or dislike you, then if you are unlucky (over a handful have been so far) will make a continuous effort to make your work life miserable. If that is not enough to encourage you to quit then you will need to cover your back or they will eventually find a way to rationalize firing you even if you perform well professionally. One problem is that Engineering management oversells the team's and its own ability to deliver. Without experience from software startups, Engineering management lacks understanding of the process of building software in a startup environment. Core components to deliver to partners have been outsourced, with loss of engineering flexibility, iteration turnaround speed and quality in engineering as result. The Engineering management team has background in large hardware firms in the valley with a different political climate than what is appropriate for a startup, which needless to say is not the most suitable background for an organization portraying itself as a cutting edge software startup.