You will not make as much money as you will in the big city. If the American dollar is what you are chasing, you are better off in the big city making an extra 20-30k.
The higher ups care but at times lose sight of what the lower employees do. Just the case of management vs peons that has been going on since the beginning of time. The opportunity to move up is stunted in the upper management is all middle aged and a ways from retirement. From starting out you will have the opportunity to move up from Helpdesk to outside level 1, level 2, senior level 2. So advancement is there, and you can advance fast at the beginning you can hit a plateau early on.
There is an on call pager that is not enjoyable and they pay/benefits when you have it do not equal having the pager. It's constantly being tweaked to try to make it better. The fact they are attempting to make it better shows they understand pager is an evil, just right now a necessary evil.
The company does go through spurts of underemployment. They are a pain to experience but they pull through it. It usually happens in a cycle every few years. We are currently going through one of those spurts which has increased work load, but they usually calm down after a big hiring session.
The data center is tied to a phone company which can make it where the data center feels like a red headed step child.
My only personal complaint is they moved me out of my office and into a shared office and it's way too loud for phone calls. It's made my job more difficult but I will eventually adapt but has been a struggle.