Pros

If you like your job it can be challenging and gratifying. They offer competitive benefits in general. They offer a dollar-for-dollar match on the first 2.5% of your 401k contributions and offer an Employee Stock Purchase Program at a 15% discount on the lower of two buy dates. John Swainson and executive management are great at keeping the employees informed of quarter and fiscal year performance, the progress made and the challenges ahead. They have regular town hall meetings if you are one who feels the need to stay in the loop and have a regular report card on the company's performance. Overall I believe they are proactive in trying to dig CA out of its hole from its past accounting scandal. I also believe they are doing a good job of managing the company as a whole from a cost and financial perspective, albeit sometimes at the expense of personnel. If you don't like sitting in traffic they encourage what they call work force mobility if your job permits it (many do) which is basically being able to work from home or wherever business demands without having to come to the office. It includes a one time $500 allowance for office equipment and a recurring $75 monthly allowance for office supplies which are expensed out on your corporate Amex card. Management has the discretion to override this, though, if they want. After working 10 years you get to choose a gift from a catalog. They did away with the CA engraved Rolex watches.

Cons

Lack of planning from the corporate office sets off alarms and creates random emergencies to complete things on very short notice for the field. CA is very centralized and the field office is responsible for carrying out corporate's initiatives. The IT organization has become very rigid in my opinion and very standardized. I'm not sure what lead to it, if it was all the compliance regulations like ISO/IEC 20000, Sarbanes-Oxley or the previous execs accounting scandal and/or just senior management's doing. It's very bureaucratic and inefficient now. Like any other large company there have been rounds and rounds of layoffs and sales folks come and go on a regular basis. So no job is really secure.

Advice to Senior Management

It's definitely a top down organization. All projects and initiatives trickle down from the top which creates a sense of paranoia among the different management levels to meet deadlines and collect information for senior management. Senior management should give up some control and decentralize operations.