Pros
Good benefits. Nice office with free (ok) coffee.
Cons
Most of the Management and Senior staff are older people with pensions, and because of their pensions (NG ended these for new hires in mid-2008 and After) they never leave hoping to add another year of service because their pension increases with each year. Compounding this incompetence is hiring ex-military just for the $9,500 tax credit each brings. Two managers were ex-military and had less experience than I did and barely any secondary education (one had a 20-year old Associates and the other a Bachelor’s - both from small community colleges, meanwhile I have multiple degrees and academic honors from two nationally-known respected universities), and I was continuously showing the one manager how to do his job – unbelievable. In all, these incompetent older staff (with way too many retirement benefits) often express outdated ideas, have a serious lack of innovativeness, and often find themselves taking defensive positions because they learn later they were\are wrong, and ruining work life for the rest of us. As a result, new staff are hired at lower than industry average titles and pay, have little say in driving a project, and little chance for advancement. Not only are senior\mgmt tier of folks wrong in how to execute, sometimes it can be dangerous as I’ve seen company recommendations so outdated, it brought significant risk to the client’s project rather than lessen it. Moreover, because many have been at the company since before 2008, their salaries are beyond industry averages negatively impacting available dollars to hire good staff (resulting in lower salaries for new staff). For example, turnover rate for people with less than five years is high. You’ll meet staff who have been with the company 1-3 years, but less likely to meet anyone with 4-10 years of service, while many others are the senior and mgmt folks with 11+, 20+, or 30+ years. I left after 2.5 years – just couldn’t take the ineptness of the senior\mgmt folks anymore and their continually defending of other senior\mgmt’s staff incorrect work and their constant requests of me to help the older tenured folks look good by either reviewing their work or just doing it myself (b/c it was easier than trying to fix someone else’s mistakes).