Pros
Xerox offers a lot of flexibility (sometimes to the detriment of productivity). You can pretty much show up at whatever time you want as well as leave whenever you want. There were some people who came in at 11 and still left at 5, and others who came in at 7 and left at 3:30. It's a very relaxed environment where you can work from home if you need to. In fact, due to commuting reasons, a lot of people would work from home one day a week which was very nice. They also allow you to take time off for personal reasons if you need it, even if you're running out of vacation. Also, the people are really great. Everyone is very supportive and friendly and people really think of each other as a family. Xerox is also good about training (at least they used to be before budget cuts) - they would have seminars and classes you could take to learn new technology or soft skills. As a last small benefit, everyone gets their own office - actually, most offices are empty anyway because there are so few people left now.
Cons
Xerox in El Segundo is dying, to put it bluntly. It's been happening for the last 10 years and it's going at a much faster rate now. It feels as though management is doing whatever they can to convince everyone to leave on their own so they don't have to pay severance - and to lay off whoever is left. Morale keeps going down because of all the layoffs and it's become a common question to ask others if they've updated their resume recently. As far as compensation, Xerox tends to give raises based on tenure instead of contributions. Actually, in the last few years, raises have been a joke anyway - there were none for a couple of years and then when they said raises the last year, they really meant a cost of living increase. However, some people who had been there longer got a higher increase over those who actually worked harder and contributed more. Also, there is no room for growth. In Engineering in El Segundo, you have developers, managers and their manager. That's it. If someone leaves, there might be room for one person to move up, but that's it. Xerox used to be good back in the day but it is far from the thriving place it used to be. People are constantly talking about the 'good old days' but those days are gone and are not going to come back. Especially now with the HCL hostile takeover (as some call it), morale is dropping fast. When the company basically sells their employees to another company, it doesn't make employees feel very valued.
