Pros
Good Benefits & Retirement Match but it's not 100% vested until 2 years of work at the company. If nothing breaks and the phone lines are slow (which is rare) you usually are free to do whatever you want as long as its productive. (Study for your CFA, grad school, etc.) Opportunity to do stretch projects (if you're lucky and you find something that is not just grunt work) Ability to take time of whenever was nice and flexible as long as it was approved by your manager. However it is not "unlimited" like they say. It will be between 15-25 days off that you can take in a year and this will include sick days because there aren't a number of sicks days set aside to be taken. Be prepared to work certain bank holidays to because management will say so - like MLK day or Presidents Day.
Cons
Many. 1) You'll be promised a rotational program but there are no jobs to rotate to and if you're lucky to find an opening you may be competing with people who have 3-4+ years of experience on you who just want to rotate laterally in the company. Upper management rarely leaves because the work life balance is so good. So you'll be stuck as a customer service rep for your first job out of college. 2) Pay is low in general for the company and most roles but technically the pay for a customer service rep in Chicago is lower 50,000k so that's how they keep you at the company cause with the job title you have, you can't make more anywhere else. That doesn't stop many MDPs for looking for new roles after they realize 9 months in that their stuck with the decision they made. 3) Very flat company structure so moving up is difficult, therefore people move laterally therefore its more difficult to rotate after your first year. 4) To maintain high metrics you only get between 25-30 minutes a day to get up from your desk to use the rest room, walk around, network. You truly live in a silo. An MDP shouldn't feel guilty for asking to take time to meet with an employee on another team to learn about their business. 5) Your job is to put out fires, not change the status quo. Product changes take a lot of time and it seem like many changes get released without proper QA'ing and communication to people on customer support is pretty much non existent as far as what exactly happens in those product release or their purpose. So when something in the product breaks and you're an MDP, be ready to be the last to know but its not like you can do much about it because you'll be repeating yourself call after call trying to play off the situation until it gets fixed. But be ready for it to be broken again it he near future. 6) Product assignments are totally random, it just depends on which manager you speak with the most, not necessarily your skill set that you bring from college. Anyone can do their job without a college degree so if you want to a top 20 school or were ambitious and in a good program - hold out for something else. Having Morningstar on ones resume is a large resume booster but be prepared in interviews to play up what you really do at your current job as an MDP because the reality is its repetitive work on company specific products where you wont have any influence on the decision making and larger strategy of the business unit. All in all - if you're a creative, analytical, inquisitive person who is ambitious and doesn't mind working hard and being challenged don't take their role. Its a good buffer if you have nothing else and need a decent company on your resume but if you're in any other position, hold out you can do better and you don't need the stress of putting out other peoples fires all day long. The only reason some of Morningstar's products still exist is because there are no other competitors in the space (yet)