Pros
The mission of the company is noble. Supporting and serving the military members who are defending our country every day is an honor. There are many different IT systems at USAA. The systems vary from J2EE web applications to "green screen" mainframe applications. An IT professional should be able to work on something he/she finds interesting in this company. The company has treated me fairly well when it comes to training. I may not have had the chance to take every single class I have ever wanted, but they definitely make an effort to meet you half way. The key for me has been speaking up and letting my manager know what training I am interested in and selling him/her on how it will benefit both the company and me. Work/life balance is pretty good here. The company is piloting some "work at home" schedules for various parts of the work force. There are also some areas piloting 4 day work weeks.
Cons
There are some truly horrendous first line managers at USAA. I guess that happens at all companies though. They are in the minority, however, when you are stuck working for them, it can definitely make you life with the company miserable for a while. You also run into some slacker coworkers here and there. I'm amazed how some people manage to keep their jobs. Unfortunately USAA does not always attract the best and brightest. The company changes strategic direction more often than I would like. For a while it was all about CMM, and then that died out. Now it is all about ITIL. In a couple of years we will switch strategic direction to something else. Sometimes I think management chases whatever the "hot" trend is without really thinking it through. Management believes IT workers are interchangeable. That irks me. It takes quite a while to learn how a particular business area and the IT system associated with it work. More respect has to be shown by management to the workers that keep the systems going and update them with modifications that enhance business productivity. Estimating projects at USAA is handled poorly. Most of the estimates are just gut feeling estimates by the workers. No history of the estimates are kept anywhere for the smaller projects. They do keep some estimates for the huge projects. More work in this area has to take place.