Pros
Compensation is close to "fair". Not "fair" as in average, simply "fair" as in you are getting what people in that particular occupation actually deserve... SOME of the "non-management" employees are really pleasant to work with. In terms of benefits, I have not had nearly the kind of trouble with getting BCBS to fork over money for health care with the PPO plan SAIC offers than I have had with similar plans with other companies.
Cons
Patholigically passive/aggressive management (add greedy and clueless, as well). This was expressed in: 1) Time management - management would seem to be "OK" with employees arriving late or leaving work for a short period to take care of personal/family business one minute, then become angry with and threatening the jobs of employees the next. And it wasn't as if said family business was going on constantly... Maybe once a month or once every 2 months... For which the time was more than made up... 2) The customer was extremely high-maintenance (often unreasonably so) - instead of telling the customer they needed to fork over more money to hire more people and get more resources to meet their demands, instead was forced to do more work with less people and even less resources. 3) Management's "time management" - put about 75% of programming staff in training during critical activities. Then proceeded to put the full weight of said activities on 2 people, whose jobs, of course, were hanging in the balance. BTW, I was one of the 2... 4) Forced to work overtime without it being later made into comp. time. Usually, for salaried employees, overtime would eventually be converted to comp. time. Never was allowed to do it. The whole idea of "there is no work done for the company on your own time" is a crock... Was told by manager he would "make it up to me later" by "giving me a longer holiday break" or some other such nonsense - I guess he did make it up to me later; he tried to lay me off... 5) Dishonesty among senior management - tell employees "the business unit's doing fine", followed by massive layoffs... That is simply the tip of the iceberg for management dishonesty at that place... 6) Raises - found them to be "almost fair". Could actually achieve a 5.2% raise; that being said, management was so self-contradictory throughout the year with respect to employee performance, and often becoming angry about minute, irrelevant details, it was impossible to gauge whether or not to expect a big raise or to be looking for another job... 7) Pay - again, "almost" fair... Better than some contractors in town, but not the best. After several fortunate slips of the tongue by my coworkers, I found that I was earning about 25K less per year than everyone else; including those with identical level of experience (or even less) as myself. The only difference between myself and the others was that I was not a CS major (though doing EXACTLY the same work). 8) HR is useless. They pretty much tell you to do everything yourself (it's on ISSAIC)!!! Especially if you are an employee seeking coverage. During their first attempt at laying me off, I managed to find a new position (whose funding was cut approx. 2 weeks later - Oh, yeah, the BU is doing GREAT!!!) completely on my own and seemingly DESPITE the best efforts of the relocation staff. When asked, they didn't even KNOW about the position!!! About they only effort HR ever seems to go to is to lay people off... 9) This is the only company I have ever worked for in which the employee has to plan/pay for travel entirely on their own. Sure, you get reimbursed for it (sometimes a coupla weeks AFTER your credit card bill is due). I have never seen a company so cheap and lazy as to NOT have personnel who handle travel; companies in Huntsville less than a third the size of SAIC (with not nearly as many resources) can manage whole travel department; evidently, SAIC has "farmed that out" (as they have with pretty much all of the rest of their support staff - and it REEEALLY shows)... I could go on... and on... and on...
