Pros
You will have a clear and bright career path here, if you are a good talker. You don't have to work hard, or know much about your domain, or deliver what you promised, but you can still get promoted and manage a large team, and travel to global offices as vacations. The only thing you must be really good at is talking. There are several forms of it. The best way is drawing a big, fancy picture of future. The future must be so fantastic, so untrue that any doubters won’t give a damn to prove it being unrealistic. Then, senior managers will buy it, since they hear no objections but only the bright, gold days in the horizon. Now you can have tons of resources, people, money, and time. You tell them it will take 3 years to finish, 5 years to be fully ramped up. At the end of second year, of course you have done so much, so well, and the mere reasonable decision based on the solid slides facts is to expand the project, to challenge yourself and the team even more, to bring the goal not only one level higher, but three, five levels higher. The company will double down on this initiative, give your more resources, build another offshore team, “let’s do it”. After three years, things seem not going super smooth. Your phase I deliverables can’t be fulfilled. Nothing is really working. Ooops. Don’t worry about it. Blame on your dependencies. This excuse always works. Why? Do you think you are the only smooth talker here? That is quite an arrogance. You miss your target merely because your upstream is totally an idiot, a damn liar, “can’t get one single thing done”. You are deadly mad at them, as you are just a victim of this bureaucratic culture. It doesn’t mean you don’t have to watch out. Actually, it is the opposite. You have to keep your true workers totally unexposed. Hide your real talented people. You sweet talk them, making them feel you are a true friend, someone they should trust and be loyal to. Without them, you won’t be able to make to year two, remember the opportunity to expand at the second year? On the other side, watch out other talkers! They are your real competitors, in the fight of seeking companies’ resources and supports.
Cons
(Glassdoor viewers, my word can only represent my point of view, so please also read other reviews to see the full picture. I am sure you will find I am telling the truth here.) Very unfairly low compensation. In the Salary section, you can find enough samples for your position. Many mid-level managers are incapable. They don’t have much domain knowledge, or technical skills for their job. They are politically smart and opportunistic. They utilize their international employees to get the work done, and they only present it. I have been working in this team for almost 5 years, I had ZERO meeting with the manager of my manager. Everything I do is kept within my team. No career path for technical experts. I am confident to say I am the best in my category in Morningstar, but I don’t make any progress in my career, except the “senior” title. The only reward I got for my great work is to assign me more work and harder tasks. I thought it was a great way to enhance my skills so I welcomed them. After almost a decade, I realize that I am used. Too late.