Pros
I worked with some really nice, knowledgeable people. It was a nice office in the Renaissance Center. The pay and benefits were competitive.
Cons
I had some major issues with my supervisor. She was a real micromanager and would never admit when she was wrong. I also got a raw deal with my contract house. They called me salary so they wouldn't have to pay me overtime, but if I took a day off, they would take it out of my paycheck. That isn't the definition of "salary" that I am familiar with. I was never asked me to put in extra hours, I was told to. Even then, she said that "sometimes" I would have to put in a "few" extra hours. Ten hours is not a few, and it was needed every week based on the workload I was given. She allotted me 75% on one project and 90% on a second and said there was 10% for administrative - that adds up to 175% or 70 hours a week. She made me commit to being there at a specific time each day. She would do spot checks to make sure I was still there after 8 hours. I left 15 minutes early once for a dentist appointment and she read me the riot act the next morning, even though I had been in early that day and had done over nine hours before I left. I didn't have a lot of incentive to put in extra hours - I didn't get paid for it, I couldn't ever finish everything, I didn't get thanked or acknowledged - this was expected. Putting in extra hours wasn't going to get me anything - other contractors had been there for many years without an offer for direct employment, and others who worked insane hours were let go with no notice. My supervisor would talk over me in meetings and correct me in front of the other team members and suppliers. She undermined me in front of others by correcting me, isolated me from senior management and business customers, gave me impossible deadlines and humiliated me when they were not met. I dreaded going to work. I had other things in my life that prevented me from expending more than 45-50 hours a week - but she kept prying into my personal business to try to find out why I wasn't working more hours. I hadn't realized that I would not be allowed to pursue anything else in my life when I signed on. The Christmas party was really dull because no one had time for anything other than work, so that was the only topic of conversation. If someone tried to bring up anything else, she would ask them how they had time to pursue any other interests. She was the only supervisor who wouldn't allow her reports to work from home unless we had a reason. So I had a commute everyday on top of the extra hours she expected. She made me remove my name as project manager from all the documents because they hadn't funded a PM for the project, and she didn't want senior management to know they were double dipping for my hours. She found fault with everything I did and never took my side. She always assumed that all disagreements were my fault and that I needed more training. She would ask me for the status of something, and if it wasn't done (which it usually wasn't since I was so overworked) she would imply that it was because I was incompetent or lazy. Her feedback was useless - she would correct the spelling of names, but not provide the info I needed. I avoided coming to her for help because she would pick apart inconsequential things. I can count on one hand the times she gave me any encouragement or kudos, but she was critical of me in pretty much every encounter. Whenever there was a mistake, she wouldn't give me the benefit of the doubt. She didn't know Clarity or Caliber works, so she couldn't give me any help, but she still expected me to never make any mistakes. I was never allowed to attend any senior management review meetings or tollgates for my projects, so they never saw me, just her, and heard her version of how the project was going. GMAC treats their contractors like second class citizens. They are not invited to town hall meetings or "all" employee meetings. Then they have the audacity to discuss those meetings in the department meetings that they did include us in. She kept telling me how important and high-profile my projects were, but they handed them to me on my first day. If they were so important and high-profile, why didn't they assign a current PM with some experience in their organization to them? There were other PM's who worked 40 hours a week who could have been assigned to these "critical" projects. They treated their suppliers like garbage. And to top it all off, they didn't include me when the entire department went out to lunch.