Pros
Mostly free of discrimination and sexism. If you perform, you will succeed. Not everybody will perform well and that may be where a lot of complaints come from. You get to work on a lot of different things, always something new. Everybody gets his or her own office.
Cons
It seems the heyday of BBN is done. Raytheon has come in and stuck us with process that do not help generate business. In the old days, BBN would eat losses to generate business; now we cut people or change the multiplier at the end of the project, leading to a chain reaction. The business market is tough, but current senior management doesn't appear to have any bright ideas to get us out of it. But the biggest problem is that A LOT of the talent has left to Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple. The senior scientists and such are still very bright, but without the lower and middle rising stars, we're done as a company. We miss our former CEO Tad Elmer.