Pros
The product is interesting, and most people are nice and well-intentioned, though a little drunk on the Kool-Aid. There's a lot of benefits in the 401K match, matching donations, and monetary perks. It's pretty good in terms of work-life balance.
Cons
Where do I begin? Most of the hard algorithmic problems have already been solved at Netflix. Most of the hard scaling problems have already been solved by Amazon-- and most engineers at Netflix write thin REST services. It's not rocket science. But the way folks discuss their work, you'd think we were working at Space X. Good thing engineering management is clueless and arrogant, and more interested in engineering by powerpoint than solving real problems. In general, there's a 'not invented here' syndrome which permeates groups, and so a lot of reinventing the wheel. The compensation is bloated, so people are trying to maximize their paychecks. It leads to poor behavior- personal branding is more important than solving problems and petty personal politics and territorial struggles are more important than collaboration. All in all, a great place to get a fat paycheck, but day to day, the work is uninspiring. If you want a real engineering driven culture, led by engineers I'd suggest going to Facebook or Google.
