Pros
Great people - by far their best asset. The pay is OK. The owners are also nice people and good work/life balance.
Kontras
I will preface this by saying some of this is not directly DS2s fault, unfortunately its just the relationship with the Prime - Boeing . That said, these are some things I wish I had known from the beginning as this is not the way a typical development shop works: Once employed, you are subbed out to a team with not enough help or direction from product and there is no real PO. Often, you'll be in charge of writing PBI's, ATs, and trying to come up with your own requirements... You will also have to estimate to the hour (which takes an exorbitant amount of time) what you are working on in an archaic EVM system in TFS that is used like a manger, because there really isn't a manager. There was little to no interaction between management at DS2 and the employees about anything that can actually help the employee do their job, what management is doing to improve the situation or doing to resolve problems (Probably because they can't really do anything about it so they'd rather ignore it). In meetings with management all you'll hear about is SIBRs (whatever that is), a 3d sand table (huh?), and other things you probably really wont care about as a developer. In your review, your goals are set to what certifications you want to get because there is no dev manager to actually to help you to become a better developer. Employees work hours are tied to a time charge, which is tied to a bucket of money that people on the team use up whether they are actually contributing or not. Ultimately, someone at the prime can throw a DS2 employee off a team without any say from DS2 when the bucket of money gets low. You'll then be directed to work on something you really didn't sign up for. The job is not super stressful, but this can be where your skill go to die if your not careful. There's more that happened to me personally, but these are just the observations I saw that are consistent across the contract .
