Pros
It's very "clean" work (do research, write about it, no interacting with the companies and individuals being investigated). Can be interesting and challenging. Work from home. Training is paid.
Cons
Using your own device is fun, but can be tedious. If your computer has a hardware failure, you can't just call IT for help: you've got to fix it or replace it ASAP. Same with internet access (which is a huge problem if you’re paying for data usage). They don't tell you up front that a two-monitor computer setup can drastically cut your work time down, and they require a printer and scanner for the hiring process (but not for the actual work), so I feel like my initial hardware investment was a little steep for the pay. When I started, I was told explicitly not to count on making this my primary source of income. However, Steele expects you to respond to emails promptly, work through weekends and holidays, and have a very quick turnaround for reports (what used to be a tight 48 hours is now a nearly impossible 24 hours). You can bend over backwards to turn in reports as fast as you can, and in the past you could make a decent amount of money, but without any notice the work can dry up for several weeks or months before the next wave hits. Now with the pay cut, you can bend over backwards for peanuts, but only until the work dries up again. They say once you're up to speed, you'll only spend an hour or two on each investigation. To produce a high quality due diligence report, you need to spend more than that, especially for complex companies and companies that have been in the media often. So the pay isn't nearly as high as they're promising. Now that they’ve cut the rates from $50 for one report to $25 (researching) or $15 (writing), analysts are actually losing money when you factor in hardware and internet costs. I've never felt so disrespected by a company before. Training is TERRIBLE: Not only does it take awhile, but once you've completed the training, you now have to relearn what's changed since the training was designed, including your group's idiosyncrasies and clients' preferences. The rules change all the time, and even if you're comfortable adapting to change, it's hard to keep track and reference these changes because the internal website is messy, inconsistent, and disorganized. A now-abandoned system where they grade your reports using a vague rubric on a monthly basis is more punitive criticism than constructive criticism. However, unless you have a very proactive and positive project manager, you won’t get any feedback at all— unless you’re gifted enough to produce good reports fresh out of the gate, project managers will pass you over for work and instead give more work to the better ICs and friends/family. While I am comfortable with giving the better ICs more work and more opportunities, Steele is not an environment that fosters improvement and wants its ICs to succeed. If you get lucky with a great project manager, this won't be so painful, but if you get one of the abusive and ignorant PMs (or have an average PM with an abusive and ignorant full-time editor), your experience is going to be miserable. In general, the changes made at Steele since I started have made the work feel more like tedious busywork rather than contributing to what I believe is a noble cause like corruption prevention. It's very stressful putting a lot of energy into a job I like only to feel like we are collectively criticized at every turn while receiving very little money for our efforts. Looking at the markup of what the clients pay vs what contractors are getting paid? We're not getting paid nearly enough… this is even MORE obvious now that our pay has been cut in half (or thirds).
