Pros
Big company stability. You can stick around forever... if you keep your head down, and go along with the status quo. Good salary and benefits. Managers flexible about time off, as long as work gets done. Great facilities. Gym on site, with racquetball courts. Core business functions seem to function very well: GIS, HR, etc. Some nice initiatives: authorship programs, university programs, charitable matching.
Cons
Excessively vertical management structure. Too many levels of management... too many managers with overlapping dotted lines and matrix structures, etc. Management style is old school, top down, autocratic and bureaucratic. Upper-level management makes decisions about things that affect people at the bottom, and the mid- and low-level managers are "just doing what they're told" by unquestioningly enforcing compliance. Regardless of the fact that some decisions have huge negative consequences and cost, this reality never gets back to upper management. Nobody in the middle is willing to speak up, and risk getting punished for saying something negative. Bad decisions are institutionalized because pointing out that something is wrong considered "unprofessional". This is despite the often recycled statements about valuing all opinions and wanting to promote innovation and think like a small company. Example: ~1500 support personnel have to use a 35-year-old mainframe (3270 terminal emulation) application for CRM. This archaic application makes the job difficult and (even more) stressful, and wastes countless staff hours. However, the justification (actually stated to us) is that this make it easy for managers to run reports! Obviously, there are many reasons to standardize applications, but sticking with 1970's technology that has serious usability limitations for thousands of people simply because it makes life easier for a handful of managers should be a big red flag about how the company is managed.
