Pros
People usually do not get fired unless they do something REALLY stupid, which means that you will be able to put bread on the table if worse comes to worse...
Cons
Only a politician can get ahead here. Quality of the work done is only secondary in importance. At this Company, the rich get richer, while individual performers, who do 99% of the work are treated like crap. Raises have been non existent and the bonus structure is set up in a way that he more you make in your base salary, the exponentially higher your bonus potential is. This means that for an average individual contributor, busting his or her behind for a whole year vs doing the bare minimum usuall results in a pay difference of about $1,000 before taxes. HR is completely incompetent and runs the place, with no imput from Management usually allowed. Management who are high enough to take them on do not do it since they are very content (due to high salaries) and do not want to jeopardize their careers to do what's right. People hired off the street usually make MUCH more than individualls who are in the same position within the Company. Many have left and come back on several ocasions, just to get a huge raise for doing the same job they did before they left a year ago. The company is full of non-value adding departments and individuals, including Operations Performance, Continuous Improvement and all sorts of specialists. Most of these specialists (who have Business degrees) are "lead" specialists, putting them into a higher Bonus bracket than that of a Senior Engineer. All these people do is run useless meetings and look at spreadhseets, without knowing anyhting about the business. This is just the tip of the Iceberg...it's good that electricity knows where to flow!