Pros
Having only worked this one industry job, I don't have anything to compare to my time at Optigo. That being said, there were a number of things that I did enjoy very much about the company's worklife.
Being a smaller company, there's a lot of opportunity for both personal excellence to shine, and facetime with some industry veterans. The work environment is also friendly, with the engineering team almost always having lunch together in the break room. On Fridays, we would all go out together for food in numerous restaurants in the heart of downtown. Additionally, the engineering team lent a huge hand in helping me - at the time, a second year student - develop as an engineer. (Shoutout to Jan and Stephen in particular, who helped me understand computer networking, git, Linux, vim ... you name it.)
In addition to all that, the location is convenient, being in the hub of Vancouver's Downtown and where the Skytrain systems converge.
Kontras
During a system deployment - that is, when the sales team sets up a new installment of our hardware - the workload can get quite heavy.