Pros
Really smart people at the individual contributor level Good compensation, nice facilities Work-life balance WAS good until they got carried away with the layoffs and doubled employee workload.
Cons
Too many to list. The executive leadership is utterly clueless and without direction. Multiple rounds of layoffs have left the "lucky" survivors seriously overworked. AOL's portfolio is littered with the wrecks of companies they've acquired and run into the ground. They had an early leadership position in multiple market segments which they squandered. Let's look at some of the casualties and lost opportunities: - Bebo. Purchased for $850M, flaming wreckage sold back to the founder for $1M - Netscape. Once the top site on the internet and a technical leader in browser technology. At least the world got Firefox out of the deal. AOL shareholders got nothing. - Mapquest. Had a solid 3 year lead on Google Maps. Zero reinvestment and treating it like a cash cow squandered that lead and invaluable customer goodwill. - X-Drive: an early pioneer in cloud-based storage. Another leadership position lost, more goodwill flushed away - Time-Warner. Was supposed to move AOL into broadband via TW cable and bring TW media content online. All of the natural synergies were completely torpedoed due to boardroom bickering between billion-dollar egos. - Advertising.com - had an early lead over Google adwords, multiple opportunities to compete squandered, little reinvestment or innovation, misguided strategy that was doggedly pursued despite copious evidence they were hemorrhaging market share.