TLDR: If you can survive in FO, you can get a better job somewhere else.
Pros
- FO gave me an opportunity when I had almost no work experience and because I started before 2021, there were significant job growth opportunities. (This does not seem to be the case now that the promotions are based off years of service -- some as long as 10 years!) - World class tech -- Databricks was a godsend, and even after moving to another tech company, is still the coolest tech I've worked with. -I worked with some of the smartest people I will likely ever meet -- particularly in their engineering department. -Team leads tend to be young, empathetic, and genuinely good at the job their direct reports do -- sometimes this leads to great workers becoming below average managers, but overall I'd say this is a pro.
Cons
-First Orion is not "people first" in any meaningful sense. Behind the beer30 and pingpong is a company expecting workers to sacrifice everything: family, time, money -- to be under paid and consistently mistreated. - 85% of the people with a "Associate Director" or above are friends of the CEO, old axiom hires, or a kid of one of the Directors. The other 15% are working themselves to death and setting unrealistic and unhealthy standards for new folk on "how to get ahead". - There is straight up bulling\harassment happening. It's a "funny joke" that the CEO curses out workers. Managers will unprofessionally reprimand workers they don't like in public settings and in private it's way worse. Completely unprofessional and always uncomfortable -- this is not office gossip, it's your director calling your friend, partner, or coworker incompetent and all you can do is sit there and listen. - The company can't "afford raises" yet continued hiring for new upper management positions -- just so happens, they are also all friends of the current director(s). These people provide very little value, and often just feel like another person for the mid-management folk to deal with.
