Pros
-Decent work-life balance depending on your team -Starting salary was great for a college graduate, benefits would be solid for a family man I'd imagine -More laid back work culture than typical office jobs (but not at the google/facebook level) -Depending on your group, it can get very egalitarian; I've had the privilege to speak to the president of my organization and he took my input very seriously.
Cons
-You get looked down on for being a younger employee, company is primarily baby boomers an the culture is very resistant to change (the number of older employees that gripe for "the Compaq Days" is nuts). Could be my organization that's the issue here, but I've had coworkers in other groups tell me similar stories. -Company claims about quality are poorly demonstrated when known mistakes are repeated over and over again i.e. having ODM's take on the bulk of design work, significant resistance to changes that would make a product more robust, etc. -Many solutions to address employee gripes or concerns are very convoluted and I feel miss the point. There was a lot of noise about a lack of career development so we launched a social learning platform that requires employees to do all the work teaching others without additional incentives... what? Wouldn't it had just been simpler to get a new learning tool like Lynda or something other than the crappy one we had? -Raises and bonuses are based on a "trickle down" mentality, essentially if your team outshines everyone else in the company but the organization as a whole screws up, you get nothing or punished for it. The team I was on supported multiple sides and teams in the company but the fact that my parent organization didn't do well meant that I didn't reap any of the benefits. -It's easy to get caught in the wave of work that comes in and feel like a workhorse doing the same thing on a day to day basis. The spark that came with the new challenges and research is pretty much gone now and I feel that it might be time to find a new career.