Pros
The perks are pretty good - unlimited PTO and free lunches are really nice. The company is growing quickly. The Austin office has a youthful, lively, fun vibe.
Cons
Most of upper management was promoted because they all worked together at a previous company rather than the fact that they were qualified for the position. There's a lot I could say about what I (and countless others) dislike about certain members of upper management, but as a female working in a male-dominated industry my largest frustrations were the unfair way I was treated due to my gender. I was paid less than my male colleagues. When I asked for a raise one year into working for Vectra, I was told I was overpaid and should be grateful for what I was being paid. Despite good reviews from my colleagues/manager I was told that "You're doing great work, but your degree isn't in computer science, so we can't pay you more." I was directly compared to a much younger male coworker and was told he would receive a bigger raise because he had a CS degree and I didn't. I tried again and after 1.5 years finally got a 5% raise, though I was told I was "overly aggressive" for having the audacity to ask for a raise after 1.5 years. One member of upper management met with me for a one-on-one meeting and spent the time explaining (/mansplaining) to me the basics of the coding language I worked in every day for the past 1.5 years (that to my knowledge he had never written a line of in his life). He also instructed me to "make my tone less harsh" when reviewing the code of my male coworkers (no one but him thought my tone was "harsh"). Other female engineers experienced similar issues of unfair treatment. For example, one female engineer was instructed to come in every day before 9am, even though all the men were allowed to work from home or start work whenever they wanted. The Austin office, where I worked, is mostly filled with fresh out of college male software engineers. This is not to say they're not nice people. However, the office maturity level is quite low and I would have preferred to work with at least a few senior engineers rather than mostly all recent college grads. The reason the office is so young is because Vectra pays below market rate and specifically targets interns / recent grads so they don't have to pay competitive raises. They promote people one year out of college to team lead roles, so do not expect any sort of proper mentorship. It might sound nice to add to your resume so soon out of college, but any engineering company worth a damn would see that one year of development experience is not enough to be a lead. Additionally, they give these promotions without pay raises. There are no yearly reviews and no C.O.L. raises so don't expect a raise without constantly pushing for one (and forget about proper raises if you, God forbid, are a woman).
