Pros
The ability to come and go as you please, without reason. "Work" from home. No clock watchers. An extremely relaxed culture, almost to the point of play hard, work when you're done playing. Virtually no websites are blocked, which makes killing time while waiting on deliverables tolerable.
Cons
Ahh where to begin? The department has been in a swift decline for the last few years and continues to gain speed with the decisions senior management is making. Wow they're bad with communication too. You can ask the same question to 5 different Sr. Leaders and get 5 totally different answers. Quite amazing actually. Oh and the President just "retired" at oh so convenient of times (of turmoil). Just throw a couple elephants and acrobats into the ring and you've got yourself a circus. Here's my attempt to explain the layoffs and replacements - Project Coordinators/Directors/Sr. PD's are the work horses of the department. They're also the ones with the least amount of experience and least amount of training (understandable when little formal training is offered). Direct correlation: they're paid the least and work the most, resulting in high turnover at that level. 75% of them leave within 2 years of hire date. Managers/Sr. Managers are next in line up the chain. Half are excellent employees (5+ years ago when promotions existed, these are the tenured Maritz employees that worked their way up to a manager level), the other half (hired externally) are absolutely atrocious and know nothing about the research industry. Now the tenured managers are leaving in droves because they're figuring out that grass is much greener on the other side (side note - I had 3 different managers in 2 years of employment). Promotions are slowly getting worked into the system now that re-org #3 in 5 years is in place. I didn't hear of a promotion in the entire department for about 18 months at one point. I was actually told my promotion paperwork was being processed...7 months before I left (no promotion issued). Combine all of that with a 1.5% raise every 18-24 months, you've got a lot of unhappy folks. Compensation is well-below industry comparables, and that's not going to change regardless of how thin the department gets with offshoring IT and not replacing employees that leave. Healthcare benefit has to be one of the highest costs I've heard of, and that coming from a non-smoker. Smokers probably have 15-20% of their paycheck go to healthcare. The rest of benefits are pretty well in line with what you'd get elsewhere. Leaving my coworkers was the hardest part about leaving the company; they are some awesome people stuck in a toxic environment.