Gruelling but educational. You certainly pay your dues but the pay is competitive.
Pros
I've been with Dell for seven years and have learned a lot about corporate America...the good and bad of it. My skill set has grown considerably over those years and I've been rewarded for it. The best managers I've ever worked for in the corporate world have been with Dell, and that says something. I've been promoted 3 times and now make a healthy living, but rest assured, I've worked a lot of hours to get here and the expectations have not diminished. The company is now embracing a work-from-home strategy that I have really come to enjoy and it grants me a lot of autonomy.
Cons
As with any corporate environment, there's plenty of politics to be had with blatant brown nosing at times. We've lost huge amounts of veteran talent over the past couple of years due to 3 straight years of no pay raises. Veterans that helped build this company. I do believe this was executive management's objective though, as those veterans were quite expensive to keep around. The layoffs have been aggressive throughout the company as we've steadily outsourced production to an ODM model. A model that simply doesn't support Dell's "build on demand" business plan. But we've sure got plenty of VPs now! Thank God! They should be able to fix everything now....snicker...