Pros
Working at Lamar offered: 1. National recognition - it looked good on a resume. 2. Career Advancement - growth as a worker and valuable on-the-job experience. Also, designing billboards provided a unique talent which not many designers possess. 3. Networking Benefits - the company is huge and you can make a lot of contacts. 4. Independence - After training, managers rarely designed over your shoulder and allowed workers to freely use their own ideas and talents when creating billboard designs.
Cons
Working at Lamar lacked: 1. Leadership - manager did not have 4-year degree or managerial training in the Graphic Design field. In particular, my direct manager was a bit immature. 2. Worker Morale - many workers were negative, dissatisfied with management, or egotistical. 3. Worker Motivation - benefits and advanced positions were unfairly appropriated. Among lower workers, there seemed to be a distrust for management. Rewards for a job well done were often not much more than an "atta-boy" e-mail shot around to everyone in the office. 4. Teamwork - Competition among designers often inhibited designers' ability to rely on one another for thoughtful critique of their work. 5. The Work Itself - This is *not* work in a graphic design studio, it is an *advertisement design* job in which designers make billboards per the Sales Rep's direct instructions. Other projects were hard to come by (i.e.: logo design, poster or flyer design, etc.) and often given to managers.