Pros
work/life balance is the best you will get in finance while working on deals people are friendly and approachable can learn a lot if you take responsibility for your own development access to executive teams/bankers, although you can't "network" with them if you want to learn a lot you can, if you want to just coast you can
Cons
the pay is extremely low for associate analysts your development depends greatly on your analyst promotions are hard to come by, and you need to be working at the next level for some time before even being considered lots of people just coast and it hurts morale (along with below market pay) hard work does not mean more pay or promotion it merely puts you in the conversation at the lower levels if you stay too long, you will get stuck here management is very unclear about promotion process (will mislead you to keep you chasing the carrot) associate analysts get stuck doing a lot of legwork due to increased regulation lots of senior people who collect big checks just coasting, noticed by younger hard workers very little turnover at the senior levels very poor technology