Pros
Stable and regular normal basic salary (bonus used to be a pro), they offer employee mental health services free (trust me, you'll need it after a few years there), decent health and dental benefits (not the best, but better than a lot of places). I got my own toll free phone number (yes, that's actually a highlight, they are light on everything else). I'm in an office outside DC, so we don't get the Segway's, fresh fruit, yoga classes, etc.... We used to get 100% match on the 401k, but they cut it down to 50% (they said due to the bad economy, while mentioning a sentence later how they had $200 million cash sitting idle in the bank, and not to worry too much)...
Cons
When I first started, I figured this was an employer who was different in a good way and I worked hard as a result, little did I know what I was about to get into. About 6 months after my hire date, I started seeing things that seemed wrong, management was always delaying bonuses and finding little comical reasons to keep people down. They'd change the metrics over and over, but soon I caught on to their game. I'm completely convinced (my opinion) that management takes pleasure in belittling researchers, for 7 years I listened to how they "we're trying to fix things". They have been "trying" for more than ten years (from other RA's I've talked to, way before I even started). Keep in mind, the "positive" reviews are typically written by those outside research and/or have worked there for less than 6 months, which is most people in the HQ/DC office. A year after I started, the all too common recurrences of computer crashes, highly delayed/dropped bonus payouts, highly suspect measurements with a metrics system that takes a NASA rocket scientist with a PhD in Quantum Physics to figure out, convinced me they were not "really" trying to fix anything. This is all part of the standard operating procedure, make the researchers job as frustrating as possible so they can take the bonus money away (hence the "complex" metrics, makes it easier to create a reason for failure) and recoup the 401K match when you quit. Of course, quitting is ideal for them, since they can now save on unemployment insurance. I realize that companies by nature are not necessarily "nice", however, there is a clear need for a change up in management. The clear "cheaters" who dump suspect to totally fabricated data are often those who are richly rewarded and those who actually try to provide customer service are often targets for managements wrath. In the "cheaters" defense, however, I can certainly understand why they "cheat" as is in many cases it is a survival mechanism, as management is abnormally fixated on genuinely meaningless metrics/numbers and judges an employees value by where they show up on a spreadsheet (preferably in the Top 10%). My favorite is the 15-20 one minute calls (excuse me, two minute calls now), it not only wastes the researchers time, but it also annoys the clients to high heaven and produces very little if any actual value of any kind. And "filling" that spreadsheet with their "numbers" is essentially your only goal. "Success" and moving up the career ladder is basically "random selection", where the lucky have fruitful portfolios and can get away with just about anything in some cases. If you get unlucky enough to inherit a underperforming portfolio, it typically means your career is already long over before it starts. More often than not, once your in the bottom, you stay there, typically forever (at least until you make the wise decision to seek other opportunities outside research). And, obviously, the ones in unproductive portfolios tend to leave first, so the new hires typically on their first day out of training "go directly to jail, they don't pass go and collect $200!". Their Gollum like obsession with micromanagement (more like Nanomanagement, if that's a word?) is also noteworthy, with the totally unnecessary, counterproductive, negative and threatening "big brother" atmosphere. Even when I actually made a $3,000+ bonus one quarter, I didn't feel good at all, more like a juvenile offender facing 20 years hard labor. I wanted to give my last bonus ($170+) back from three months work after their biased metrics math was applied in exchange for a slight ounce of simple basic respect (which is easy and free).