Pros
It wasn't all bad. I felt my salary was higher than it would have been somewhere else for a position of the same level. However if you have no other health insurance option than the Arysta plan, then the higher insurance costs will more than offset any salary bump you might receive. I was in a fortunate position where I could enroll in my spouses benefits plan, but I felt bad for my co-workers who didn't have that option. The company said the plans were "scaled back to meet the market average", however, my research leads me to believe it must be significantly below average. To illustrate what kind of impact the Health Insurance benefit will have on your total compensation package, I recall that as the benefits for 2016 were introduced we were told that we should start bartering with our doctors to lower our medical bills to make up for the higher deductible plans being offered. The example we were given was to explain to the doctor that we had a high deductible on our health care plan and that maybe they could charge us less than what they charge other patients. We were told this was the way of the new health care law. That may be the case, but I've asked plenty of people since then if their employers are saying the same thing and haven't found anyone yet. My new employer has not suggested bartering and, while it's still a good chunk of my salary, my monthly contribution is significantly less and covers significantly more than the Arysta plan would have. So now my spouse is enrolled in MY plan.
Cons
"Good is not good enough at Arysta" proclaimed the speaker from the podium at the National Sales Meeting. "You have to far exceed 'good' if you want to succeed at Arysta. We expect much more than just average." A few minutes later, within the same speech, the benefits package for the coming year was introduced and it was explained that the company did some market research and discovered that the health insurance benefits they provided their employees were above the market average so they were scaling that back to be in line with the average. And so began my employment with this company. I had already come across a number of clues leading up to that point which caused me to think that I had made a mistake. Like the very first meeting/conference call I was on that accomplished nothing. The fact that a C-Level executive later derided the meeting as a disaster temporarily reassured me that this was an anomaly. However that reassurance was short lived. They never, ever got better. Each meeting was more harrowing than the one prior, with each participant in their own bubble, seemingly oblivious to the other participants' diverging perceptions of what was to be accomplished. This went on for years and is presumably still taking place today. The work I was assigned was an endless cycle of busy work, made necessary by a merger with a similar agricultural chemical company with incompatible record keeping, and by the reporting requirements of the parent company, a public company who's infrastructure was simply not in the shape it needed to be in order to efficiently roll up quarterly results for the required SEC filings. My initial thought was that I would be able to improve on the current processes to minimize the amount of time spent on said busy work in order to dedicate time to actually making an impact, but even if the rigidity of a multinational company didn't stop me, the density of the task list was too much and thus my days (and nights) were too consumed to make any headway. That being said, it didn't take me long to realize that my life for the foreseeable future would be centered around long hours of unfulfilling work for the advancement of a company that expected a better than average output but actively worked to keep my compensation average. Not wanting my resume pock-marked with rapid-fire job changes, I cautiously searched for a job I was sure I would enjoy to ensure my next move would be the last for a long while. That took some time and I ended up staying years at Arysta. Now it feels as if the clouds have cleared, the flowers have begun to bloom and I have control of my life again. I had been there so long I had forgotten what life on the outside was like...and now that I'm here.. it's beautiful.