Pros
Laid-back atmosphere (as long as you aren't on the team implementing SAP). Good work-life balance, even for positions with on-call duties. Relocation package (as long as you live outside of WA). Craig Jelinek seems like a good guy, who holds with Jim Sinegal's ideals. Easy to coast, if that's your thing. 3% raises every year no matter how little you work. Costco's business model seems to work as well or better overseas than in the US. q.v. how well Costco is doing in Korea, Japan, etc... Company is crazy profitable. At least for now.
Cons
No telecommuting (but there is on-call work that you'll have to do from home). Schedules are not flexible (e.g. 4x10, 9x80, flextime, etc). Compensation for salaried IT staff is subpar, no bonuses unless you're a manager or above. No raises for promotions unless you're making less than the minimum for your new position -- and even then it's not automatic. 3% raises every year no matter how hard you work. Architectural decisions in IT are made in a vacuum (mostly by people who have recently moved to IT from elsewhere within Costco... e.g. from real estate or the bakery) At a recent Employee Engagement meeting where they discussed the 40% approval rating of management in IT, a VP recently discussed how 80% of respondents entered in a 'tell us the top thing that the CIO ought to change" questionnaire was compensation, and #2 was telecommuting (which Costco does not allow). However, senior management chose to ignore the top two responses to the CIO and instead focus on #3, "Communication", citing the reason for not addressing compensation as "We don''t want to hire Google- or Amazon-level employees. We're a retail business." Additionally, nobody in IT understands Requirements-Gathering, and the 'solution architecture' group offers cookie-cutter, created-in-a-vacuum advice that anybody inoob n their 2nd year of IT at an IT-centric company could give in their sleep. Most folks who actually belong in IT leave after 2-3 years, leaving IT full of people who prefer to coast, who don't really belong in IT, or recent hires from out-of-state who have to figure out how to pay off their relocation package or else wait 2 years until it expires and they can find something new. Most IT folks that have been around more than 5 years have been "Costco-ized" and had their drive beaten out of them; the only thing they work hard at is making sure that they don't have to do any real work.