Times are bad, company is slowly disintegrating and from within.
Pros
People were always great and some truly creative and wonderful intellects work there. We were able to work at home when necessary with no trouble. Good contribution to 401K (but that has since been modified -- it's no longer by pay period but once per year, and only if one is working on Dec 15 -- hence layoffs prior to Dec 15...)
Cons
Too big, which clogs productivity even when intentions are good. Obsession with stock returns instead of doing things well. Speaking from experience as an acquisition (i.e. member of acquired company), their aim is to squeeze out whatever they can with minimal investment -- worked people to death, laid off good people, neglected basic maintenance of software in favor of flashy non-enhancements. Within our acquisition, approach was to pile on more and more work while laying people off -- in the process the application was run into the ground. The system of performance reviews based on "stack ranking" (that is, a quota of bad ratings -- someone must get a bad rating, regardless of actual performance) is horrendously toxic. Everyone hated working there, whether they were being laid off or not, even people in Watson, supposedly the hottest area.
