Pros
Good benefits (except salary) An excellent physical facility at Biodesign Institute with respect to the building layout. Support departments like Purchasing, Facilities, IT and EH&S are very good. Access to significant infrastructure like library resources and journals is great relative to the private sector. Based on the structural assets, the potential to complete significant research is there except...
Cons
it rarely seems to come to fruition. Making 'forward-looking statements' is being raised to a competitive art form by the Principle Investigators. N.B. Execution is more important than advertisement. It's probably better to complete the work and THEN talk about it if credibility has any value. As with most academic labs, each PI acts as their own mini-company and the segregation between groups is pretty high. Not very much collaboration or even interaction between groups in the same building/floor. Low pay: this manifests as a tendency to hire grad students and postdocs from Chindia as a majority of the force. Or perhaps it is the other way around. However, the quite truth about hiring 3 (or 4) for the price of 2 is pernicious and pervasive. No merit pay raises or even COL. Even in the face of successful grant funding.