No time, high stress, high turnover
Pros
Knowledgeable coworkers, high impact & visibility, ability to work with massive amounts of resources. Internal transfers are possible.
Cons
1/3 of the time oncall, getting paged 20+ times per day for issues that are often out of your control. Insane turnover, so that people who stay >6 months are some of the most tenured. 9 of 10 people turned over on my team in about 8 months. Because of this, the ops schedule is constantly shifting and doesn’t consider planned days off, to the point where I’ve had to reschedule vacations and plane tickets because no one could swap for that week. No time for documentation, and tribal knowledge gets lost when people leave. There is also little time for mentorship, which in high stress situations leaves junior engineers feeling unsupported and even more stressed. Managers are non technical, and care more about getting results, as opposed to creating robust systems or taking time to plan and act proactively. They would rather re-architect an entire system than move slower and build a well thought out one to begin with. That said, experience depends a lot on your team. My advice is to ask about operational load, work life balance, and project work before joining.
