Pros
If you’re smart, you can progress pretty quickly. Most of the orgs tend to be a meritocracy, of course there are exceptions, but my experience has been pretty good. Recently, I think I’m seeing the culture shifting to adapting more hard skills and valuing technical abilities. Huge emphasis on innovation with AI.
Cons
Too many people who spend most of their time in meetings and not enough skilled people who can actually build stuff. Tons of waste and many problems are approached by throwing a small army of talking head “project manager” types at them, when the core need and resource constraint is people who understand how to implement solutions. I've witnessed multiple instances of large vendor contracts not delivering after an entire year, while a small but highly technical team working on the side of their desk actually builds a solution that works.