Pros
Their biggest Pro is their staff unfortunately you would never know by the way they treat them. Some of the best and brightest IT people I have ever worked with. Should have been valued as the hard working and innovative group that they were but instead were treated as pawns in a power play. However the attorney side of the house was very different and seemed to be great. I genuinely enjoyed working with those folks.
Cons
Management particularly in the IT group, more specifically in User Support and Training. I had four different managers in 4 years, each one worse than the last. At one point I was even told by my manager that I was to be seen and not heard for the first six months of my employment even though I was a trainer with 15 years of experience in a variety of competencies. Management always remind you of people whom they have let go ("laid off", "fired", etc.) in the past and subtly let you know that, at any time, you could be next. By the time I was left 5 years later, there were only two people left in the entire group who were there when I started and at least 20 new hires that had been let go within months of their employement. My direct management had no understanding or desire to learn about what our department did, yet they spent countless hours micro-managing every little task without providing any clear direction. The slightest mistake was grounds for a talking to or worse and that included typos in a document or even talking to a co-worker in the hallway in a tone the manager didn't like. When I received praise for my work from the CIO or an attorney it went unacknowledged and unappreciated. Yet others on my team could spend the day making personal phone calls In IT they would ask us to plan out projects and then cut days or weeks out of the plan and then berate the team when we would under-deliver. More often than not though we would kill ourselves to meet the deadline. My direct manager also spoke inappropriately to the team and was often belittling (for example, telling my co-worker that she sounded as if she had been lobotomized in a meeting in front of the entire team.) Management would start off reviews encouraging and then it would quickly spiral into a character assasination and an attack on your personality. I would speak in confidence about my work related issues with management, yet later management would tell other team members what was said, thereby creating a rift within the team. This included the HR team as well. Personal information delivered to management (such as an illness or death in the family) was often disseminated to the group which was not only inappropriate but often illegal. Snide and inappropriate comments about clothing, hair styles, shoes, voice and personal attributes were not only made by management but encouraged from other team members by asking leading questions that there were could be no good answers to. All in all one of the worst, most demoralizing and stressful work experiences in my twenty year career.
