Pros
Good starting point, can make a lot of good contacts and meet a variety of people in numerous agencies and fields. Has a mix of projects that are able to be worked on, many of them have very interesting applications.
Cons
Highly team dependent. Work satisfaction will depend on the contract/project you land on. Technical work is evaporating and more and more time is spent making pretty power point presentations that have little value, are presented once and then immediately discarded and never referenced again. Repeat monthly. Management of certain sections is very hamstrung, non communicative and ineffective. Managers are oblivious to many challenges ongoing, and when presented with them often sit for months on an issue until it boils over and becomes a problem. Many times, they have been ineffective at resolving those issues at that point. Management does not do a good job of managing customer needs. Too much emphasis is placed on never questioning the client, leading to too much duplicated or wasted effort because management rushed to get a product instead of attempting to determine what does the customer need/want and getting clarification. I have not experienced much opportunity for lateral movement and working on multiple projects. It seems to be often the case of becoming too valuable to a single individual project and not being allowed to split time or branch out. I have witnessed others share this experience, as well as others not be constrained. Seems to be luck of the draw on managers/projects.
