Pros
Convenient downtown location. Negotiate a good starting salary because you will never see a decent increase again. Decent PTO if you can make it to 5 years.
Cons
The culture is built on people amassing knowledge and creating empires and silos to protect their jobs. There is little to no documentation and an insane amount of customization which makes implementing standard procedures and policies virtually impossible. When you do find documentation, you cannot trust it. There are a hand full of key people who truly understand how the place runs and if they leave, the company will implode. They want to desperately be a "big" player but do not have the courage to make the hard choices to become a "big" company. The result is committees to pre-plan and then again to plan and then again to review why the plan didn't work. The dirty truth is the place is built to support some key accounts and if that is your focus, you will do very well. For everyone else, the scenario is much different. You find yourself competing against each other for the last scraps of resources and attention. All while being forced to prove that what you have is better than what somebody else is asking for. One could argue that this breeds a competitive environment and the strong will rise to the top and one would be wrong because the final decisions all come down to what appears to be pure whimsy. As a consequence, employee morale here is the worst I have ever encountered. If you are not "in", you are "out". Despite talk of collaboration and employee development, the reality is you are just a body completing a task. A lot of employees figured out if they focus on that, then they can get through the day and collect a steady check. For others, it becomes a drag and the anger and frustration seeps into every crack and crevice. "New blood" comes in and attempts are made to correct and change the culture. But there is no support and each attempt dies a slow and agonizing death. If you are looking to be used up until you burn out, then this is the place for you. If you want to work for a company that values your contributions, supports your development, and rewards creativity and risk while providing standard parameters to work in...........then my advice is to keep looking.
