Pros
The development centers work on actual client needs and are a bit insulated from the nonsense at corporate HQ.
Cons
HQ is a train wreck. Only the politically bent people get promoted, and the CEO is insulated from what really happens by both his wish not to know and the sycophants that directly report to him that cover the bad things up. And if you do tell Tony what he doesn't want to hear, you're on the short list for being pushed out. The CIO is one of the worst kind of managers. He never took the blame for anything his people did, and used scare tactics on the ones that didn't know enough to fight back. He had no issue taking the credit, however, for other peoples work. Before he was the CIO, he flat out lied to the CEO about status, but then that was what the CEO wanted. Very politically aware. Once the old CIO was pushed out (he was also a piece of work), he wasted no time promoting his favorites and pushing out anyone who was smarter - hence the high exit rate. Most of the worker bees really wanted to do great work, but the only way they could do what was to get moved out to the development centers or to customer sites. When I was there, the oldest, biggest piece of software was already an unmanageable pile of ASP and VB code. The poor guy that was in charge of it was berated weekly by the old CIO because of it's problems, yet it was already collapsing under its own weight when he was hired. Then the CEO had a new brain-child "AI" app built that no one wanted to buy, and no one in CAI wanted to use. But the current CEO was managing that one, and told Tony what a great idea it was and how wonderful it was coming along. The lead programmer of that albatross was promoted to Chief Technical Architect, but had as much architectural experience as a bus driver. But he attached himself to the CIO and it worked out for him.
