Pros
All of the below (pros and cons) vary massively depending on your team and role. These reflect my experience only, on a specialist environmental team. -Good work-life balance -Interesting projects -Some opportunity for international travel -some support on technical excellence passion projects -Many extremenly knowledgable and skilled experts in certain fields -International reach, and huge variety of sectors covered
Cons
-Relatively poor pay by industry standards -Poor progression, and progression seems to depend entirely on your relationship with your team leader / line manager. You can be an outstanding technical expert or project manager, but if you aren't their friend, it seems like you'll go nowhere. -Poor communication between teams -Lack of time codes for mandatory activities, like divisional meetings -A lot of red tape when attempting to win work -Huge variations in quality of life between teams/units/divisions- some are very flexible, and respect your personal life, others expect regular unpaid overtime and deny leave -Though on paper the company is employee owned, share ownership is extremely opaque, and only available to quite senior staff. Non-shareholders are very much kept in the dark. As far as I know, no junior staff own shares. -Strong push to "get back into the office" even though many staff have been home-working even before the pandemic. Push to return to office has not been justified with anything except vague platitudes about culture. -Fairly poor employee retention, linked to issues raised above
