Pros
Mission critical government contract provided good job stability and a relatively low stress work environment. This pro is for the MPSC contract more than it is for E.L. Blake. Things ran smoothly as long as E.L. Blake remained hands off. At the team level, things are great, the team leads are pretty awesome. Flex PTO was a nice perk, although it was very strongly encouraged to not use more than 3 weeks of PTO, despite it being "unlimited". The senior management at E.L. Blake is East Coast based and work remotely, so we didn't have to deal with them too often. Anything involved management, work, benefits, etc., you'll read about below.
Cons
Simply put, everything else. I'll elaborate. For the first year that E.L. Blake took over the contract, they remained hands off and things ran smoothly. However, after the first year, they decided to start making changes. In a 3 month period, they took away our water cooler, they denied reimbursement for work-related industry certificates even though they stated they would reimburse prior to taking the exam, they strong-armed our PM into being compliant and not standing up for us anymore under threat of being fired, they began micro-managing the work we were doing, they cracked down on the dress code (Business casual) which was already being followed but they didn't think was strict enough, for a time we had hybrid work but they would make us come in under the guise that they were coming to check on things only to cancel last minute and still requiring everyone in office for the full week they were supposed to be there but weren't coming anymore, they made comments about how our teams weren't diverse enough for their taste and made comments about eliminating team members just to replace them with more 'diverse' individuals, and they topped it off by finally eliminating hybrid work and forcing a full RTO. Overall, pay is definitely lower than what is competitive in the marketplace, benefits are mediocre-bad depending on your personal health, and other benefits like flex PTO are only decent. A 5 man team - CEO, VP, Director of Contracts, HR Manager, and FSO - took over a contract that already had 200 employees. That same team then had the gall to ruin a program that was running smoothly - objectives were met, the government requirements were satisfied, and the work-life balance was awesome. Poor management has ruined it. There were the typical problems like telling people to not talk about pay, and general lack of effective communication between employees and senior management, but those paled in comparison to the rest of the problems that E.L. Blake caused. I cannot recommend AVOIDING E.L. Blake enough. I loved working at that job under other contracting organizations, previously Summit Technologies. But ever since E.L. Blake took over, it became one of the most toxic environments I've worked in. Even if you're desperate for work, I'd still recommend avoiding it.