Pros
Not many. Gained a lot of technical experience fixing/troubleshooting what were essentially antique instruments.
Cons
The company does not care for its people, wants to pay their lab technicians 1/2 of what they would make performing work in a plant. The attrition rate is insanely high. In the lab that I worked in the employee turnover ratio was insane; well above 1 (i.e. Essentially starting with a fully new staff every year). When your turnover ratio is worse that at McDonald's I think it's time to look at the management and its compensation structure. The company refuses to make sensible investments in securing its future profitability. The company would rather shell out $1000 per sample sending it to another lab 1-2 times a week than spend 50k to buy the instrument to run the samples in house. Also the work/life balance is ridiculous due to the fact that we could never keep a trained and qualified staff I found myself constantly working 60+ hr work weeks... For months on end. Even when I wasn't working I was perpetually oncall to coordinate with with our technicians and client. From after my first month I found myself doing parts of my managers job, but by the end of my time there I think the only tasks my manager was performing were: Bantering with coworkers, bad mouthing ALL of these same coworkers, ordering consumables, and leaving early. The training is horrible as well. Training was essentially to do some general corporate online training, then in the eyes of the company you were qualified as a fully certified technician. When people that do not actually understand chemistry (because you don't pay enough) and aren't properly trained play with chemicals this is extremely dangerous. I witnessed 4 serious instances of chemical burns which should not and would not have happened if the staff was adequately trained.