Pros
Keep in mind I can only speak of what went on in my business unit - I am sure other parts of the company are totally different. The company spends a lot of money on educating its managers. I was sent overseas on a commodity training courses, they paid for a good part of my post grad education, they sent me on leadership course and paid for a VBA programming course I showed interest in. As an up and coming trader this company is both good and bad. On the good side, they were quick to give me a prop book. I suspect this is because when I arrived at the company people knew next to nothing about option trading. I could not believe the huge positions being taken by people that did not understand non-linear risk and were getting paid a fortune. For me this was a good thing because option trading was my speciality so it was easy for me to stand out.
Cons
On the bad side, the company is not good at managing talent. For example, there are some really "average" (to put it mildly) people in some really key positions. This frustrates the talent that has to report to these "average" managers/presidents. Further, the bonus scheme is a mess - you can do a really good job and make money but if someone else in your business unit makes huge losses then everyone suffers. What makes this worse is that Olam does not demote or fire managers that make huge losses and they allow for all sorts of lame excuses.