First, ESRI is collection of 4 or 5 "companies" flying the same banner. There is a division that develops commercial products usually called "Core". There is a "Professional Services" division that does contract work or "work for hire" projects. Education services provides training. There are a few other divisions. Each division operates independently of each other, but ultimately reporting to the owner of the company. This means that divisions often compete or conflict with each other, sometimes even sabotaging each others' goals. There's limited cooperation between divisions and often limited to 1-on-1 interactions or informal agreements between groups.
As far as risk... The flip side of their being very little risk is that there is no consequence to failing to do your job. Employees who fail to deliver on a project due to incompetence or poor work ethic continue to be put in positions of responsibility. Managers who make bad decisions or are not qualified to hold their position are never called and forced to face the consequences of their actions. Rank-and-file employees are allowed to do whatever they want with no risk to losing their job. Incompetent employees openly walk around socializing with other non-productive employees without any consequences.
There is some informal penalties for failure or incompetence such as being transferred to less important projects or groups if a high level manager (Director/VP level) is angered or made to look bad by the failures. Otherwise, there is almost no real consequence when compared to other organizations. And for many folks, this is no consequence at all. Few people have ever been fired for incompetence or consistent failures to deliver. People who are directly responsible for critical technical failures or mismanaging major contracts into the ground still have their jobs. In most cases, they are again put into positions where they can wreak the same path of destruction.
The majority of people believe they are above average performers with excellent technical skills, when in reality they would be unable to get a job at any other technology company. Many employees don't have relevant education or job experience, nor do they have any concept of how other software development companies function. The company hypes up their software processes trying to convince customers they are one of the "big boys" in software companies. However, the practical application of those processes leaves something to be desired in all divisions. Concepts such as testing harnesses or having a QA team are relatively new innovations at the company and hence are very ineffective.
The company is also very "cheap". They hate spending money on anything. There are pervasive stories of the owners of the company scrutinizing minor expenditures and micromanaging the finance department. Assistant directors have to approve purchases as little as $50 and are encouraged to deny purchases even at the expense of productivity. They also try to defer as many expenses as possible. Simple, but important things like getting a light bulb replaced in your office can take weeks. They scrutinize travel expenses for "waste", sometimes for amounts as small as a few dollars.
To be fair, this attitude varies from department-to-department and expenditure-to-expenditure. Overtime is given freely to most developers with the only caveat that non-Core staff must be on a contract to get overtime. Timecards are not scrutinized and an employee can work nearly unlimited overtime, even if they are bad at their job (or simply doing nothing productive).
IT resources are hit-or-miss. Certain divisions are allowed to have as many machines as they want with little regard for cost and can get them refreshed every year or two. Other divisions are given outdated machines and must get deputy director level approval for a second machine or update to their existing equipment. Equipment like hard drives, extra memory, or an extra AC Adapter may be denied even if it may negatively impact a project.
The company thrives on highly talents people who mistakenly believe that it's worse everywhere else. Sure, ESRI is actually a decent place to work in many regards... but it is not above average by most measures. Most of the employees I have encountered have only worked at one or two other companies or came right out of college to ESRI. All of their friends work at ESRI or are not in the software industry. Hence, they don't have anything to compare to ESRI other than a few anecdotal stories from people who fled terrible companies to come to ESRI. People who leave ESRI are either fools, unappreciative of what they have, or simply malcontents. So anything negative they have to say cannot be trusted.
ESRI is an ok place to work. There are pockets of talented people that can make technology that literaly changes the world. On the other hand, there are far more people that do absolutely nothing and collect a nice paycheck.
