Pros
Nielsen is, indisputably, the leader of Media and CPG market research. Their roots run deep into the Media and Consumer businesses, and have been reaching out lately to establish themselves in the new media platforms as well. There is some comfort in knowing there isn't much opposition to your employer. There is still a tremendous amount of growth, as they embrace new technology and platforms.
Cons
For the last three years, the company has reorganized every six months. Upper management loves to shuffle the deck ,and the folks who seem to put out the worst products tend to stick around the longest. The rest of the employees are also treated to a game of musical chairs, and end up leaving for other employers whether by will, or by force. The instability generated by all of this has forced out many of the top talent at Nielsen, and has resulted in a massive brain drain. Many Projects are left unguided and entire platforms unsupported, which leads to outages and panics to pull in any available resource to right-side the ship. Salary freeze has been in effect for 2009, so no raises, and bonuses for 2008 were lower than previous years, even though goals were all met. There are no set standards when it comes to IT, they are still trying to iron out that now, but in an organization of this size, it will take many years to become manageable.
