Tough, Stressful and Demanding Yet Highly Rewarding
Pros
The product development team in which I worked, had a dynamic workload covering exciting brands from the public and private side of the business. This meant there was always plenty to get your teeth into and that delivering a high quality project for a high profile brand was a consistently rewarding and satisfying experience. Personally I worked with a very good manager and team that made my experience substantially more worthwhile and found certainly from my role's perspective the senior management to - for the most part - be very savvy and commercially geared yet approachable and hands on.
Cons
Given the heavier workload, the salary was very much at a Junior level compared to the expected level of work. Especially if you factor in the lack of performance related bonuses and limited opportunities to increase it. Not only this but there's an exceptionally high level of demand and stress put on employees to deliver rapid and consistent quality, which is certainly important for the business but can certainly take a toll on morale and staff turnover, 12 hour days were certainly common.
