It's like a merry-go-round. Somewhat pleasant, but in the end you have to decide when you want to get off.
Pros
Valuable experience good and bad, you can learn from. Generally nice, friendly, respectful, professional people. Great opportunity to be around so many people and backgrounds. Talk often about being innovative. (Just don't ever really do it). Talk about risk. (But end up doing something completely safe or for the wrong reasons). Value presentation and premium aesthetic quality. Still very nice quality in some of their products but do not always justify the price point. Always trying to come up with new features. (But usually hardware based). Great at about trying to decipher a diversified target audience with different shopper preferences. New president provided some energy to some difficult times. And in fairness, a lot of natural disasters did happen to the company. Talk about trying to improve things. Nice looking, fairly impressive building. Upper management generally very cordial and affable to lower management and employees. Very nice when you walk in the door. Make you feel at home. Do their best not to be stuffy. Decent benefits plan. (Sadly some people abuse the system).
Cons
Really have a difficult time separating strategy from approach. Stopped being an innovation company and became a me-too electronics company. Old OEM mindsets. No clearly communicated or substantiated vision. No common deductive approach. Look for holy grails and magic turn-keys. No hard planning more than a few months at a time. (Largely overseas fault). Too many missed opportunities and too late to market. Poor cooperation between the other Sony entities. Lots of redundancy between positions and at the same time, often too little support. Trickle down marketing as opposed integrated marketing. Lots of platitudes when it comes to business culture and objectives. Useless line extensions with no clear point of difference. Bureaucracy at home and overseas. Lot's of finger pointing at home and overseas. Focus on the wrong things sometimes and almost completely pedantical. Can't seem to provide complete experiences like is competition. Siloed business units. Old perceptions of BTL and ATL. Too many project managers, more like traffickers. Often, unfair wage compensation, not based on ability or hours of work. Often pretentious attitude that it is “a privilege” to work for or with Sony. Constant layoffs and restructuring, not always justified to the right people and BUs. No accountability but quick to place blame. Sway their own research to fit the company mantra. Horrible at refinement. Like to start over completely at scratch or bring back ideas that never work at all the first time. “Six steps forward, five and one-half steps back.” Certain VPs and groups hold all the power. Use “self-empowerment” as an excuse not to provide employees the right tools. Lots of politics. Sad they had to import leadership and they could not find it in the U.S. Unethical human resource practices whereby employees were forced to take vacation at certain times. Questionable ROI metrics. Award ceremonies that seem to focus only on a few BUs. Ambiguous responsibility matrixes.
