Pros
* Learn a lot (something new every day), with dynamic culture & interesting coworkers * I manage an enthusiastic and invested team of mostly non-US citizens (though the citizens are also enthusiastic & invested, to be crystal clear) * Salaried, working over 40 hours on average, but not worked to death - maybe 43-45 hours / week? * I own a couple of software services that we built fully native AWS, according to security & operational best practices, that internal customers love and which we may take public some day
Kontras
* Not every manager I work with is as invested nor as interested as most, and these people tend to be roadblocks for people like me * I have to fight the stack ranking process during performance review time, maybe I'm too empathetic sometimes * It can be very difficult to get a hold of a principal engineer for technical advice for my relatively junior team, which has led to me needing refactors for the software built before I took on the team