Pros
CoBank has great pay, benefits and training opportunities. But beyond those things which can be found at some other financial institutions, it is a fairly large bank that still enables its employees to get high-level, cross-departmental exposure through the projects they work on. The Enterprise Risk Management department in particular has also allowed me to gain experience in managing market, credit and operational risk, in addition to programming, software and database experience. The projects I've worked on in ERM have gotten high-level exposure and allowed me branch out and take on different roles well outside my department. Further, CoBank has great leadership that has been pushing the bank hard technologically to meet the changing environment of the financial services sphere. This has allowed me personally to get experience in a lot of new software. Finally, CoBank has as its mission to help farmers and rural America. Given the current headwinds facing farmers and rural America, I can really take pride in everything we as a bank do for the customers we serve.
Cons
When I first joined the bank, CoBank was behind the curve technologically from where I came from. However, I think the bank is (and has been since I joined) working very hard to close the gap and has made strides in this area. Additionally, when I first joined the bank, some of the processes were very much in flux which could make things difficult. This has since stabilized in my area at least.