Pros
Pay is excellent. Some will say it isn't, but you tend to get spoiled when working in tech or finance. It's all relative.
The people on my particular team are phenomenal - both rank-and-file and management. Clear career pathways. Management is attentive, very smart, friendly, approachable, receptive, and very down to Earth.
Nice office amenities.
The work itself is fine but can also be overly specialized, meaning you won't necessarily get exposure to everything in the industry. The firm is so large that they can have specialists in very niche sectors which will put a cap on the amount of things you can learn. Overall, though, I'd say it's good exposure to the meat and potatoes in the industry.
People, generally, on other teams and throughout the firm are actually quite nice. You'd think in high finance that you'd have arrogant finance bros (there are some), but on the whole I'm surprisingly pleased with both the caliber of employee acumen and their amiability across the firm.
Cons
Work-life balance used to be better but seems to be in line with the industry. The firm has moved to work-from-home only 1 day a week with some exceptions.
The firm is in Newport Beach. Housing is insane. The disparity in pay at PIMCO from the top rung of executive and portfolio management to the lowest rung is incredibly absurd which rivals the biggest tech companies. You have some portfolio managers making 10s of millions or even 50 million in bonuses alone while an admin assistant can be making 50K/year.
During the pandemic, the firm forced employees to get vaccinated based on bogus information.
