Pros
A little about me, so there's context around why I'm rating the pros/cons the way I am: 1. Currently, my long term goal is to move towards a SME (Subject Matter Expert) role. I'm not interested in marketing, sales, travel, etc. I want to stay technical and lead a team while a project manager or someone else deals with all that other stuff. I'm loving that I'm able to continue to mentor as long as it's at a technical level. 2. I'm an introvert that will look like an extrovert around my team, but will quickly escape large events (i.e. Fridays at Four Happy Hour, Town Halls, Quarterlies, etc). 3. I prioritize pay/benefits over annual company retreats, Christmas parties, BB-8 races, stocked snacks/drink fridges, etc. As long as I love the company/people I work with/my work, then I'm happy (and for the record, I did)! I don't need those extras because I suspect those costs will drain any extra money that could go to a salary instead. PROS 1. Work/life balance. This is a big one for many of us in consulting. Slalom has a fantastic work/life balance for the few years I was there. There was never a point where I had issues taking vacation, working from home (depending on the project/client), etc. I think there was about 2 weeks out of the whole few years I was there that I had to work over 40h because there was some emergency, but sometimes that happens. The key is that it was super rare and always met with recognition/gratitude (sometimes compensation in the form of a small spot bonus) if it was needed. 2. Project Work This one is probably in the middle, but I'll put it here since my last project with them was awesome. I think there is a decent amount of stuff to choose from to work on that you'll be able to find something interesting. Your People Manager will work with you to get you on a project that makes sense for your goals and interests. A few of the projects were boring, but some of them can also be awesome. I won't really put this on Slalom because that's just consulting in general. 3. The People (Friendly-wise) All the people at Slalom that I met were friendly. I made quite a few professional connections before I left and I'm sure I'll work with some of them again. Leadership is especially great at this (not a surprise). My People Manager was the best and truly enabled me to go after my promotions, professional goals, etc. I learned a lot while I was there, which was awesome. 4. Events/Parties/Hackathons I think it's great that Slalom puts these on. Some of them are smaller and happen more often like game nights, pizza Fridays, and the like. Some of them are larger like annual company retreat, Christmas party, Hackathons, etc. Personally, I'd prefer to not go to these. I went to a few company retreats and one Christmas party (only because my significant other wanted to). It was nice, but I would've been happy just not going. However, I'm putting it in the positives column because it's something that's offered and I'm sure that those looking at Slalom as an option will be interested.
Cons
CONS 1. Promotions In some cases, it's not very clear what it takes to get promoted. When I was working on getting promoted from Senior Engineer to Solution Architect, it wasn't very clear why I wasn't initially promoted. I went through a lot of painful red tape and found out part of it was because of budget and not my performance. There wasn't an available Solution Architect "slot", if you will. It was acknowledged that my performance was above average/on the high end and I would be fit for a Solution Architect role. I think that was the disturbing thing to me. I was at Solution Architect level in terms of merit, but simply not promoted. In any case, it took another 6 months for that to actually happen. I'm guessing because one of their SA's quit and a "slot" opened, but it's possible I'm mistaken. Maybe they're trying to move away from that mindset. 2. Career Progression I couldn't see a path that I wanted to take after I was promoted to Solution Architect. The next step from there is Solution Principal and every single one of them I talked to were WAY less focused on the technical side of development and more on managing the client/team. I want to stay on the technical side, but their current structure doesn't seem to support a Subject Matter Expert or Technical Principal role. That's more what I want to do long term, but that's not currently an option at Slalom. Therefore, my choice was to progress into more of a manager doing WAY less development or quit. Unfortunately, I wasn't really given much of an option there. For now, a Solution Architect is as far as you're going to be able to get in Slalom without getting into the "less technical" space. Hopefully that will change in the future, because I'd love to come back in the years to come. 3. Compensation This is the primary reason I left. Simply put, Slalom pays under market value in the Seattle market. When I can go from ~110k base salary (~120k with Slalom annual bonus) to ~140k base salary (~155k-160k), that's too much of a gap (which is approximately a 30-35% raise from where I was at working at Slalom). I brought this up numerous times to leadership (director level mostly), but I didn't get anywhere. I'm not upset since some of it may really out of their hands (at the director level). However, I hope they realize that it's costing them top engineers.
