Pros
-A sort of safe haven for fresh out of college Ph.D.s to learn about how to use their science or engineering specialties in a corporate environment. -Fast-paced and sometimes exciting projects accelerate the learning curve and help develop you into a more confident engineer/scientist. -At the Associate level, the people are fantastic and enthusiastic with high-level knowledge in their respective fields. Would be hard to replicate this environment elsewhere. -Get to work on projects with major tech companies and find out cool secrets that few will ever know about.
Cons
-Opportunities to get project management experience (which directly decides how quickly you move up in the firm) can be extremely scarce depending on your personal situation. Some upper level staff adhere to the philosophy of giving opportunities to junior staff while others keep it all to themselves to pad their own stats (and pockets). It is possible you could quickly gain experience and become a leader but it is more likely you will fight tooth and nail and get nothing which is demoralizing. -The way the company is structured naturally feeds work to the top-level staff which makes sense from a first look, but when you find out getting work or "capturing" projects is one of the top 3 metrics used to decide your advancement in the firm this quickly becomes a con. -Managers and Principle Engineers in the firm have ZERO training in leading people. The firm assumes that you are a good leader if you've managed many projects and thus brought in a large amount of money for the firm, but this has nothing to do with leading people in reality. -The overall culture is flawed. You will hear many times from senior staff that Exponent is 'a company of individuals'. This naturally breeds chaos in high pressure projects as there are many egos to feed which slows down progress. It also can result in associates being caught in between two senior staff that are feuding or decide they don't like each other and don't want to work together. If you enjoy the team aspect of engineering then I must warn you, this firm will frustrate you.