Pros
Compared to the places I've worked at before and after CTC, it seemed like my CTC coworkers and immediate managers were very competent about company systems. I've worked at R&D firms and aerospace firms before and after CTC, so I've always worked with smart, educated people. But, wow, at my current employer if I ask how to file a purchase request, I get shrugs from 10-year veterans (and ambivalent answers from people in purchasing). At CTC, I'd be pointed to the correct people, correct form, and on-line how-to manuals in minutes (alright, maybe hours). It was a place that worked smoothly (until the executive leadership got involved - see Cons). Pardon the silly comparison, but I often read Dilbert comics and thought, "Well, I know that bumbling happens elsewhere, but not here - at least not at my level." Pay and benefits were great. Raises were good (and seem much better compared to my new employer). The work environment was mostly laid back. Flex time and understanding management gave good work-life balance. I got to work on interesting research projects and occasionally travel the width and breadth of the US to customers or research sites.
Cons
Executive leadership is running the company into the ground. CTC grew rapidly for about 20 years because it had the lobbied backing of Congressmen like Murtha and Young. With directed funding cut off, CTC made a stumbling, painful transition to a mostly-competitive bid environment - but it made it. It didn't hit its growth targets in the mid- to late-2000s, but it didn't shrink too much. Some non-Johnstown offices suffered layoffs, but the company as a whole seemed stable. Then there was that tipping moment when the many reorganizations and new plans started getting rid of the vital people, the people that customers signed contracts to obtain good work from. When your big contract depends on the customer knowing and liking the engineers on it, you don't lay off those engineers and hold an expensive company-wide event about "rebranding" CTC to be the company that forms strong bonds with customers. But CTC did just that. CTC also didn't seem to understand business development. "It takes money to make money," but CTC had nigh-ludicrous business development requirements. You were expected to capture contracts on a smaller budget than most companies would award as finders' fees. At the time I was laid off (2012), the personnel hired as highly-paid business development managers were usually "highly connected" former government personnel who, because they had a lot of drinking buddies in government, were expected to draw in big contracts. However, former military officers lacking familiarity with CTC's capabilities were not the right people to sell us. I lost count of how often my managers had to brief and re-brief the BD "capture experts" on my office's capabilities. I can count how often we got contracts from those experts: zero.