Pros
Infinite opportunities if you are driven, and hard work pays off. Salaries, bonuses, and benefits are hard to beat, but they come at a personal price. The company is pretty accommodating to special schedules (working from home, certain days off during the week, late/early start, etc). The people are incredibly smart, driven, creative, and diverse--and that's what kept me motivated. It's definitely the people I'll miss the most.
Cons
Work-life balance is hard to achieve here. Face-time is built into the core of the culture, so long days are standard. Working your tail off and having something to show is what is valued at GS. Ten hours is a standard work day in Operations--not eight. If you want/need to work eight hour days, you take a 20% pay cut. Teams are incessantly understaffed. Layoffs happen every year and each team feels the constant pain of losing people who had knowledge, struggling to get through the daily workload, and constantly starting over and training new people. If you haven't had a promotion in a couple years, you are on the chopping block. Technology infrastructure is wildly outdated; in one function, you can use upwards of 40 different applications/web tools. Processes are painfully manual because of old and non-integrated technology.