Pros
Flexible with school, tuition reimbursement that is pretty good, training is broad so you come out with a wide problem-solving skillset. Lots of lateral growth if you are frustrated with the current work but senior enough to move up. Promotions are fairly narrow- memebr service rep --> senior member service rep --> loan officer --> that's it until a manager vacates their position and there are probably 20 eligible applicants for any of those positions when they open.
Cons
Technology is very dated, extremely poor information relays- sometimes I heard about things from members on the phone before management would tell the front lines. PenFed paid for my degree through tuition reimbursement and after four years and graduating with honors in a very related field, I was told I wasn't a right fit for an "associate risk analyst" job that asked for a college degree and 1-3 years of experience in the finance industry and supposedly gave internal preference. That gave me the hint that since I started as a phone teller, I would never be anything else to them. Fine by me, I left and in few months had a job doing what I love making more than all of the 300 employees in that office, save for maybe the top two people. And it's not just me, anyone worth anything leaves because they get ignored and aren't paid enough. Horribly short-sighted- use Windows XP, Internet Explorer 6 that doesn't even have security updates anymore, and a dated phone system that caused all kinds of confusion. They could have spent $2 million updating their tech across the company, but instead ignored it for years and got 250,000 credit card numbers stolen that cost the company over eight figures to mitigate. Just a big whoops that was inevitable from all the smaller ones that are constant. Any real and valuable insight you bring to your position will absolutely fall on deaf ears. Had a hiring freeze in 2010 even though the company was never once even close to the red, just smaller profits. This led to horrible staff-shortages and after 4 months of mandatory overtime through the holidays, they expanded the workforce by nearly 20% just to play catch up. Didn't work, cuz they hire idiots, and when you try to pull 60 people all at once, you suck the market for good employees dry.
