Pros
Excellent 401k matches, and the 401k plan has a decent selection of low cost mutual funds, among other benefits. Love the ability to work from home. Seems to be a stable company that doesn't run in the red/debt. So probably a decent place to work all the way up to retirement - as long as you are a hard worker, and can prove your worth to upper management, you'll probably have a job for life (if you are into that idea). Just be sure to make all of your hard work visible to management, otherwise you are likely going to get hosed during raise or promotion time. One will just need to go to the projects where the money/budget is at. Work at the office is acceptable, is kept at a comfortable climate and they have provided us all with very nice, comfortable highly adjustable ergonomic chairs to sit in all day long. Cube farm is a drag, but at least they are high wall cubes. Once you prove your worth, management is very lenient with regard to letting you flex your hours around Dr. appointments, sick time, vacation time or any other time you may need to take off. The project I am working on has a very bright future, assuming we can get past all of the growing pains we are currently experiencing. Nice to be provided with a decent hands free headset/boom mike - cause you're going to need it! The company as a whole is very connected - be it through IM, Email, Teleconferencing, Video Conferencing, live meeting, etc.
Cons
I hope you like meetings, because if you land a job here, you are going to have anywhere from 5 to 6 meetings per week (worker bees), upwards of 10 to 15 (or more) for leads. For management - all you will do is have meetings. You will become a professional meeting attendee/planner. High level management (at least on the particular program I work on) seem to be clueless with regard to how things really work in the "trenches". The only thing they seem to be concerned with is staying within the budget, no matter what, and committing to absolutely unreasonable deadlines - I suppose this is how it goes at most jobs though. Expect to work mandatory overtime, if you are in danger of missing a deadline. Although overtime is paid (straight time), the first 5 hours over a salaried 40 hour work week is "free" (you don't get paid for the first 5 hours of overtime, even though I have been lead to understand that the customer is billed for these 5 hours). The process, red tape, documentation etc, required to implement just one line of code is preposterous. Several of the tools and hardware that the developers are forced to use are archaic, slow, and nearly useless in some cases, and serve as nothing more than productivity killers and add to the frustration levels of the developers. It seems as if management absolutely refuses to listen to (or even attempt to implement) suggestions that the worker bees make - which would likely solve at least some of the problems the project is currently experiencing. System Engineers have WAY to much power over the Software Developers - whatever they say goes, regardless of what a group of very experienced developers have to say about it.
