Pros
People are very bright, fairly well-educated, and typically are competent at their jobs. Politics aren't too prevalent, so it's pretty easy to feel you can trust your coworkers, making for a more pleasant work atmosphere. Teams seem to work well together and are supportive of one another, all working toward a common goal of delivering high-quality products. One of my coworkers describes the company as a "think-tank" and while I would not go that far, I do find the environment intellectually engaging much of the time. Vacation benefits are not the best in the business, but are much better than many other people receive. Salaries are good IF you are hired as a staff employee or higher. If you're an associate level or lower, you earn an hourly wage and receive less vacation time -- not very good. And the support staff has to work very hard -- it'd be nice if they made more money. There is also a pension plan in addition to a 401-k type of savings plan (403-b). Another real strong positive is that even though the company provides employee outings twice a year, you are not obligated to attend. It is not like at some companies where, even though they can't insist you come, they make it clear that your prospects for advancement will suffer if you don't attend. That doesn't seem to be the case here.
Cons
It's a professional services consulting firm, meaning that you have work only as long as there are paying clients asking for the kinds of services you are qualified to provide. Contracts generally run about a year, so there is usually a month or so when contracts are ending and new contracts have not yet been signed, and people are wondering whether they will lose their jobs. Some people have to go on furlough or take unpaid vacation time or work part time until new contracts come on, which creates a financial hardship for some. Although you earn a salary, 100% of your 40-week has to be billable to a particular contract. If you cannot bill 40 hours to a contract that week, perhaps because you've already used your allocation of project hours for that month, then you have to make up the remainder of the 40 hours by using your vacation time, even though you may actually still be working during that time. And since you have to bill all your time to project work, you end up having to always spend more than 40 hours working because there are so many administrative tasks that have to be taken care of that are not billable. The company calls this "professional development" time. On that note, anything you wish to do to improve your skills and be a more valuable employee is typically on your own time, paid for out of your pocket. Very little assistance is given to professional development -- you're very much on your own there. A friend of mine who has a state government job got about 90 hours of company-paid training on company time last year, and asking for such training is actually applauded and counts toward her goals at review time. I'm envious. We're expected to take additional training here, and it counts at review time, but it's much harder to do when it's on your own time at your own expense. Doesn't seem right to have to take a vacation day when you're out attending training (that you paid for) that will make you better at your job. While the company may be more technologically savvy than many companies are, there is still room for improvement as to how that technology is used. Each employee is issued a laptop as a work computer. This facilitates mobility since we often go out to client locations. However, the company still frowns on employees working from home. They provide the tools and technology that make it easy to work from any location, but then they don't trust us to be mature, self-motivated people who will still strive to get the job done well even if we're not in the office. Curious. That doesn't mean you can never work from home, it's just frowned upon and can only be done in special circumstances. And there are some employees who work from their homes full-time, but the downside is that it then becomes harder to get on to new contracts. Advancement is another issue. It is VERY hard to earn a higher salary once you reach a certain level unless you're willing be a project manager or a team lead on very large projects. You can have the highest level of expertise in your chosen field and be extremely competent at your work, but if you're not willing to run large projects, or just don't have the necessary talents to do it well, your advancement prospects and your income suffer.