Pros
Name brand company. FactSet is only second to Bloomberg in brand recognition for market data providers. Great outside opportunities. FactSet's clients regularly poach their FactSet contacts and team members for roles at their firms. If you're good at networking, you'll have a great job lined up for yourself when you're ready to leave. Great exposure to the various facets of the investment industry. You'll learn the investment types, the investor types, the technology used for investment processes, etc. but only if you have the initiative to learn that stuff yourself. FactSet will only teach you how to use and sell FactSet. Below market rate pay for most roles, but boosted by an employee stock plan in a high returning company. Excellent compensation and perks if you're in Sales.
Cons
Management has zero appreciation for non-sales roles. FactSet's product models are divided into Development, Support, Implementation, and Sales. Only associates in the Sales function are valued, and if you are not in the Sales function you'll never be promoted to management. You are a faceless cog in their machine. You'll receive no praise, no senior management face-time, no career development guidance, and no bonus. Sales are the cherished stars; company paid group drinking nights, exotic retreats of the Chairman's Club for the highest generating associates, massive bonuses, and of course all the promotions. You'll be reminded of this fact pretty much every day, as every time there is a sale of any magnitude a giant metal gong in the office is rung, and the person who "earned the sale" will give a little speech and the whole office will have to clap for them. There are only 2 metrics FactSet cares about: ASV and Meeting Count. ASV is how much annual subscription revenue your clients are contracted for. Only Sales earns credit for growing ASV; nobody cares how much ASV you supported, ensured didn't cancel, or helped the implementation team implement. In fact, if you're not in Sales, management only tracks how much ASV you lose; you get no credit for growth or retention. Meeting count is an obvious metric. What isn't obvious to management is meeting quality. Are you in Sales and you had a leisure 4 hour day filled with casual chats about nothing with various clients over morning coffee, lunch, afternoon coffee, and a dinner? 4 meetings, what a superstar you are! Drive 3 hours to a client's office, spend 10 hours building and delivering a workflow your Sales team promised a client (without consulting their implementation or support teams to see if it's even feasible), and then drive 3 hours back home? Only 1 meeting, what a garbage employee you are! Turnover in non-Sales roles is frequent and horrendous. I've never seen any other employer where roughly a third of employees quit without notice. About once a month I'd come in and someone would have just left their badge on their desk and a pile of work that was promised to clients that wasn't done, or just not returned from a vacation the day they were due back until their job was considered abandoned, or just sent an email out of the blue mid-day saying "bye, I quit". In truth, most of their managers don't deserve the courtesy of a 2-week notice; they’d usually bad talk their departed staff the moment they are out the door, talking about how incompetent they are, even if they're off to a much better opportunity. Staff behavior is almost high school like. Development is treated like unwanted nerds by Sales and was even physically located as far away from the rest of teams as possible, far away from common areas like the kitchen so nobody had to interact with them. Only Implementation and Support members usually talked with them and treated them as equals; when Sales was forced to interact with them you could feel the awkwardness and pandering in how they treated Development.