Pros
Goldman is filled with very smart, competent, and hardworking people. Even if someone is not the brightest person on earth, they definitely exhibit certain strong traits (such as communication, negotiation, etc) that make them effective at their roles. Work is challenging and interesting. The technical platforms are sophisticated. Almost all technical works can be traced to business needs and managers ensure that the developers understand their business impacts. Very little red tape and bureaucracy. Everyone tries to get things done and every ounce of effort put in by anybody serves a reasonable purpose. Flexible work hours. People can work from home, leave early, or come in late, if needed.
Cons
Goldman is infamous for long working hours and intense pressure. Very often people have lunch at their desks, come in early, and stay very late. Even when people are at home or on vacation they're most likely checking their emails. Everyone is expected to be reachable 24/7. Project timelines are usually grossly underestimated and deadlines are inflexible for changes. Depending on departments and teams, it can get political at times. Teams reshuffling can happen quietly when under new management. Performance reviews might not necessarily reflect on performance because managers have complete say on the final rating and what comments from the reviewers are going to appear on the final review. Some managers honestly don't care about their employees career growth or their satisfactions. "Knowledge drain" happen easily because most support work of the IT teams has been offloaded to offshore support team, who has very high turn-over rate. Platforms are not necessarily stable because the focus is on delivering new business requirements in the quickest way possible. This often adds burden to supporting the platforms because new systems are being built too fast without having to consider how to support them. The paid is not that high compared to other firms if taking the hours into account. Promotions and titles are harder to get compared to other firms as well.