Pros
Good place to get started, great training, looks good on a resume. You can learn a lot here about the investment industry. You can get your securities licenses on their buck. You can gain valuable skills in various areas that translate to "real-world" worth. It's a great place to make friends.
Cons
The basic deal here is you are used. They sing a song of "work-life balance", but depending on your position, that balance is weighted toward work- as in work is your life. The Peter Principle is alive and well here. Incompetent people are many times rewarded with management titles- and put in charge of talented people whose jobs they barely comprehend. These managers then micro-manage and terrorize their staffs in order to feel "important" and in control. These managers are too afraid to push back at Snr. Management on rules that should not be "one size fits all". Super talented, intelligent people have been lost by this organization by their insistance on shoving square pegs into round holes over and over and over. Interestingly enough, there are a lot of Vanguard veterans that have drunk enough of the kool-aid to remain.