Pros
Autonodyne is a quickly growing small business in a trendy part of Boston working on real capabilities for the warfighter using a unique set of tools for the application its focused on resulting in a diverse set of talent. In short without giving too much away, its an interesting melding of employees who likely went to school and never envisioned they would be working on defense applications. Generally, the working team is easy to work with, is fiercely passionate about the easy-going culture and gets excited about bringing the team together with trivia night, board game night, going to movies together and lunch together. Pretty standard startup culture if that is what you're in to. The company has a healthy view on short and medium term revenue, is transparent about it and has not sold yet so there is options for stock. The company is support programs that are in the news and while Autonodyne is rarely mentioned, your work is supporting the cutting edge capabilities to the war fighter. The work demand is not crushing and some may make the comment its two easy and laid back.
Cons
The team is very junior, middle management is junior and leadership with the exception of the CEO and CTO are very new to the organization. Middle management is pretty incestuous by effectively being the last ones standing as the org has gone through growth and contraction cycles over the years. I will agree with others, they are pretty cliquy but they mean well and are passionate. The main failing of the leadership and management team is that there is no one who is setting a good example of how to lead or doing any professional development. The company on one hand says we want to grow the team and develop careers but on the other hand says "this is not a teaching hospital" which ultimately results in strong talent leaving with those that simply meeting the standards remaining. The non-standard tooling approach means that the team as a whole does not have a lot of domain or industry experience that would come from working in the Aerospace/Defense/Tech sector due to a large portion of the team having a "gaming" background. The net result is frustrated workers, frustrated management and leadership who cant seem to get their head around the combination lack of performance and lack of quality control. Additionally, leadership has become a bit of a piranha club, new entrants are ruthless, cliquy, and political to the point where the words that come out of their mouths don't feel real and with an intent to manipulate. I don't believe that leadership actually know what their products are, not that they don't know what things they sell but they don't seem to know that the strongest position they have is information they hold within and not the products they sell. Their value is in the is in the relationships and expertise they have genuinely earned and not the line item on a contract. The main challenge is that is hard to quantify so in turn leadership tries to quantify it with IRAD dollars on products that have a niche market and depend on other things to fall into place. Autonodyne is never the bride, always a bride's maid.