Pros
Product has an actual shot at accelerating electrification and therefore reduce gas emissions overall. Some really talented folks (though not more than 20% of the headcount, sadly).
Kontras
There are many cons of working at SPAN. Leadership is weak (if we can call that leadership). They cannot make a decision to save their lives. When they do, they tend to revisit that decision 10 times creating a never ending whiplash effect downstream. Key leaders have never been in such roles - and it shows. CEO has the right mindset to go from 0 to 1 - and is great at raising money (which he should focus on); but he unfortunately cannot execute or drive the organization to execute at scale. That would be acceptable if the COO could actually drive the execution: but he doesn't (or can't). Behind closed doors, CEO has actually no respect or consideration for people. He sees them as pieces of a puzzle that he can move around at will without ever thinking about the impact to the broader organization, or to people's career development / actual compatibility (both skill & personal). That is how you end up with VPs running disciplines they have no clue about. There is no Product Leadership: whatever a customer or prospect will say they need - becomes an immediate "sprint" to implement without any research or planning. This leads to unreasonable/impossible schedules and milestones for an understaffed team to execute on. Nobody says anything as voicing the concern is seen as negative. Programs inevitably fail and the Exec team's response is to re-shuffle the "pieces of the puzzle" without ever looking at themselves in the mirror. When the impossible/unreasonable plans end up failing: the leadership - CEO first - pivots to the blaming game rather than offering actual solutions to unblock the situation (which is largely due to their poor planning and decisions). Whenever recommendations of improvements are shared with Management: they are ignored and received with "we are a startup" type of excuses, while SPAN is 8 years old venture, in its 3rd generation product. Executive team thinks they know best - and as a result do not create an environment of empowerment and enablement for the Managers and ICs at SPAN. As a result: decisions always need CEO inputs; while on the other end, very qualified people end up doing intern/grad school level work while the VPs and Execs hang out continuing to make poorer and poorer decisions, behind closed doors. A suspiciously glowing review mentioned that SPAN is not the place to coast: I'd argue that it is exactly the best place to coast. 70% of the company spends very little time on revenue generating activities. A small but mightly 20-30% carries the weight (until they decide to leave) and the rest will continue to be clocking in and out without much accountability "until the next reorg". If you're looking for "great vibes" and a collaborative atmosphere: you should run. SPAN offices is zombieland with not much to see. That is when > 20 people do show up to the office; which is a rare occurrence.