Pros
If you’re a glass-half-full person, you could say that job security was a huge pro. There was so much work to be done in my department that I knew I never had to worry about it running out. Of course, glass-half-empty, that means I was consistently overworked and execs seemed to have no concern about appropriate staffing.
Cons
Where to begin? See above: the amount of work I was doing was ridiculous. Our department's workload more than doubled over the last 3 years, but in that time, we only hired one additional person. When I gave my notice and my boss asked me why I was leaving, he was surprised that I said I was overworked. With his next breath, he asked if I would come in evenings after working a full day at my new job to help them stay caught up. Um, no thanks! Benefits and pay were horrible. All we would hear from the execs was how great the company was doing and how much money we were making. This money was not re-invested in the employees. At my interview for my new job, the people interviewing me laughed when I gave them a ballpark # for what I was making at HSTM. I once offered a job to a guy who turned it down because he was going to make more money at the PEACE CORPS. Think about that one! No matching 401K and no tuition reimbursement. I'm already getting more time off at my new job than I did after 7 years at HSTM. (And I was earning the absolute maximum at HSTM.) Communication was absolutely pathetic. Execs were seemingly incapable of understanding how important it is to tell people what is going on. I was amazed at how little I was told as manager. I would find out second- or third-hand about decisions that directly affected my department. Unfair treatment: Some "leaders" got to work from home and work some interesting hours (like rolling in at 10 and leaving at 3). Doesn’t exactly make you feel engaged and motivated to work hard. Our job was market research, with one of the main branches of that being employee satisfaction. The last internal employee survey we did was 3 years ago and we never got the results. It was like the company hoped we would all get collective amnesia. Considering that the year before, when they actually did let us know the results, they did nothing to solve any of the issues that were presented, I guess they figured it would be easier to just pretend the survey never happened. There is no career development. I was never offered any management training and when you combine that with having supervisors who are totally disconnected, it means I was on my own. The last year or so I was there, it was all about quantity, not quality. Let's sell, sell, sell and not worry about whether or not you have the resources to deliver what was promised. And make sure everyone is focused on arbitrary deadlines, and not on delivering a quality product to clients.