Pros
-Office culture generally promotes a healthy work-life balance (minimal travel involved) -Place to learn a lot of technical skills and apply them on a regular basis -Using PTO is fairly simple as long as you give proper notice
Cons
-Extreme variability between project workloads (some overworked, others underworked) which is amplified by the fact that you tend to stay on projects for years -Work is not fulfilling as you spend most of your time cleaning data, running processes and creating client materials while providing little or no insight -Managers while competent in their own expertise can vary dramatically in style, which is a problem when you might end up with just 1 supervisor for 3-4 years -Lack of perks and focus on a cohesive office culture makes it a very 9-5 type atmosphere where employees are not encouraged to interact socially and can be very isolated -No transparency regarding billing rates, company profitability etc. is disturbing and indicates lack of trust between upper management and employees -Very lean project teams means that there is often only 1 person who knows an entire piece of project which leads to difficult transition periods