Pros
Working for a company like Northrop Grumman provides you the benefit of a large, stable company. When you get hired you know that you will most likely not be let go. The company's philosophy is to keep people for the long-term, as long as you are generally a good employee. The benfits are good. The pay is average. There are opportunities in mentoring, leadership development, and extracarricular activities.
Cons
As a young employee fresh out of college, I can say that the company is overly traditional, and although they claim to value young employees, they definitely to not show it! I hate to be this blunt about it - but everyone is old. There are few young people. Of course, this can be an advantage, depending on your perspective (since a large poriton of the workforce will be retiring within the next 10 years). However, the company needs to compensate for this. They should encourage get togethers for younger employees, plan activities for them, or somehow find a way to live up to the fun and creativity of companies like Google and Yahoo. They need to give young employees praise and positive feedback consistently. The work we do is very difficult, and we are doing it amongst people that know how to do it with their eyes closed, as many have been here for years and years. Management should NOT expect us to pick things up right away and should encourage us to learn and treat us with respect. Perks for new employees would be great. I cant think of many. Most perks are given to senior employees. If you dont show your appreciation for young employees, then we will leave the company. And ultimately the company will be stuck with a bunch of older retirees and there will be a large gap in knowledge transfer. The company will never evolve. Another downside are the traditional ways of the company. Meetings are long and inefficient. Trainings are awfully boring, far too long, and consist of lectures instead of direct involvement and learning through practice. And wait until you try to state your opinion about it to a coworker or a manager. They will likely just shrug their shoulders and stay away from any new ideas or act like they dont know what you are talking about. Their idea of training new employees is to either throw them into random training classes that are a complete waste of time, ask them to learn through books, or throwing information at them. People aren't really willing to take the time to sit down and explain things to you if you dont understand something - they either act annoyed or are too busy, or they just don't want to "overwhelm" you with critical knowledge that you need. I realize that its not like this at every single Northrop Grumman, but this is definitely the case where I work.