Pros

Not a very demanding place to work, so it was easy to balance it with other activities. I was actually able to hold a second part-time consulting job on the side for about 6 months without really straining myself. Most of the engineers were pretty competent and nice people.

Cons

When I arrived at the company in 2003, it seemed like the company had its technical core hollowed out by about 15 years of steady layoffs. There were some very knowledgeable senior engineers and then there were a bunch of new guys. Some of the senior guys seemed to not care so much about whether or not any real work got done. Then again, many times our customers (the Army) didn't really seem to care. As long as the status reports were completed, everybody was happy.

Pay raises were ridiculously low (<1%) even when you got very good performance reviews. In percentage terms, the cost-of-living-adjustment for social security was three times my raise one year. My manager was not amused when I pointed this out to him.

Non-engineering areas (purchasing, quality, document control) were pretty abysmal. Some IT systems were extremely out of date and completely mismanaged.

Advice to Senior Management

They need to start thinking more long term and strategically rather than just going for the near-term quick fix to please the military folks.