Pros
- You will be able to add many meaningful bullet points to your resume - far more than would be available at a large, traditional company. In this respect, it can be a GREAT first job for 1-2 years if you can pay your loans and rent with the low junior worker pay. You'll be able to walk into a better company (and hundreds of former employees have) with real experience doing real work and you'll be blown away at how other organizations have such slow and lazy average workers but such sharp, organized, and strong managers and executives. - At the mid-and executive level, benefits/comp aren't bad (and can be good if you end up in a corner office), but they're not cutting edge. At the introductory level, prepare to be paid like you're worthless. - Generally friendly, collegial work atmosphere among the masses.
Cons
Where to begin... - Leadership is, at best, inept, and lost, while at worst actively creating a hostile, counterproductive, negative work environment. Most folks want to do their job well and help the company grow but executive leadership is too often slowing down progress with their own lack of strategic vision and operating tactics to implement any plan (if they had one). There are endless “plans” and “projects” that never get done because they try to do too much too fast instead of getting a few things done completely and correctly. - The company personifies "old boys network." My impression has long been that women (and minorities) were often looked down upon and hired to do lower quality jobs while incompetent and/or lazy white men received promotions and adulation. - If you're connected to the top brass, you can pretty much do no wrong, and can't get fired (even if everyone who worked for you quit and gave you extremely negative reviews). Likewise, if you criticize or clash someone who is connected, start looking for a job immediately because you will be railroaded out of the company. - Zero career support. The performance review process is a joke and everyone knows it. Most review processes are, but this one is particularly useless because high performers only get promoted if someone quits, gets fired, etc. They have yet to discover that you can recognize someone for putting in time and quality work with a comp adjustment and level change, even if core responsibilities don’t hugely change. - This place defines hypocrisy. One of their values are something like "candor" but all the people who open their mouths get shunned, shushed, ignored, or told (contrary-to-fact, in many cases) they're wrong. Be prepared to play nice and quiet if you want to work here. - The place is in a constant state of re-org. You'd think that at some point they'd realize that they just don't have the right executives – and then can the bad ones. It's not just one person or two people. They're constantly reorg-ing partially because the good people leave and partially because they won't just chop off the toe to save the foot at the executive level (though they're perfectly happy to fire people at lower levels). They have incompetent VP's (and higher execs) running groups into the ground; these people don’t get fired but get promoted to run something else (into the ground). - HR needs to be at least honest, if not trustworthy. Do not trust this HR group at all - they are the company's secret police and anything said to them goes straight to executive leadership, likely blackballing you. Most things they say are known lies at worst significantly disingenuous at best.