Pros
You'll work with passionate, highly intelligent people who care about making a difference. With any luck, your team is what will make Chemonics tolerable, because upper management certainly isn't looking out for you. Travel can take you nearly anywhere in the world, essentially all expenses paid. You'll see places you never dreamed of going. It's very exciting! Of course, you'll be working a ton, but you'll have some time to explore. Can be a great opportunity to get yellow fever and other expensive but necessary vaccines for intercontinental travel. Chemonics also offers a $3,000 professional development stipend that you can use on educational courses for anything remotely related to your job. This could be language courses, Excel or data courses, finance--they're very flexible with it! The second star in my review was added for this generous training policy. Finally, despite their innumerable flaws (and like so many other toxic workplaces/universities), Chemonics has managed to maintain a pretty great reputation. It will look great on your resume in this field, whether or not the company deserves the prestige.
Cons
The entire structure of the company is based on pushing employees beyond their full capacity at all times, obligating near weekly overtime. Nearly all employees are required to do "New Business" work, that is, assisting Chemonics as it bids on new proposals to "win" new contracts. This work can be extremely demanding, time-consuming, and urgent, and participants are often provided with little guidance other than being sent 80-page manuals via email. You are expected to fully perform on these New Business teams, but you are also expected to give 100% to your day-to-day team and ongoing (very busy) project. Any 4th grader can tell you that 100% plus additional work equals overtime. If you DO end up working overtime for a new business proposal, you can get a comp-ed ($15) dinner out of it, but ONLY if you work past 8pm, and ONLY on a weekday (no weekend meals are covered, but you WILL be expected to work some weekends). You may or may not receive comp days for your overtime, but they will never be equal to the extra hours that you worked. Chemonics has a very poor initiation presentation. They teach you a few HR items and then you're pretty much on your own. I really wish this massive company could have developed a better system by now to train new employees on basic, general tasks that everyone needs to learn. Supervisors don't have time to go over every single small albeit important task. Teams are perpetually understaffed, and upper management doesn't seem to care about this. The bottom line comes before all else. Finally, in January 2021, Chemonics launched a new ERP system called D365. No one likes it because it is a system from the underworld. Unfortunately, nearly everyone has to work with this system weekly. The first 7 months of using the system were compete chaos, wasting inordinate amounts of time and resources. Upper management has never apologized for the stress, waste, and lost time caused and does not seem to acknowledge the struggles of staff members lower on the food chain.