I really enjoyed the size of PDi. It's not too big, and not too small either. There are only two full-time mechanical engineers (at the time of writing this), so I got to dip my hands into pretty much every aspect of their jobs — making or revising models/drawings, dealing with their ERP, mechanically testing products, working with pretty much every department at some point, etc.
The company culture is also great. There are less than a hundred employees, so pretty much everyone knows each other. During the summer months, they usually have cookouts for lunch about once a month. The president wants to make sure everyone's happy working there, and it shows. Plus, PDi's de facto mascot (Norie the dog) shows up pretty often, and that's always a treat.
What I wish was different
I don't think that there's anything I wish had been different. There really isn't anything to complain about, aside from maybe wishing that they still had an in-house IT guy instead of outsourcing it. That's part of being a smaller company, though. Sometimes certain positions just financially don't make sense to fill. And there's also the issue of being lower on the priority chain with suppliers, which we ran into some problems with while I was there.
Advice
Do not worry about asking questions or needing help. It's a smaller company, so even upper management isn't going to shrug you off like a cog in the machine. And if your department head's anything like mine, you'll probably get a good anecdote or two in the process. Seriously, I was surprised at how open and helpful everyone is. It's a really nice company.
