Pros
Pension. This is the only reason many are still hanging on.
Cons
Employees are no longer treated like professionals, work life balance is no longer a priority. When I started nearly 15yrs ago the culture was totally different. It was why I gave up another opportunity with more pay. I did not regret it for about 8-9yrs, then millions were spent on consultants and destroying the company culture, management became more of a revolving door, with leadership who had never worked in the business areas they were tasked to lead. This has lead to a lot of poor insight into business processes and how to really improve them. The paid time off system was changed, screwing tenured employees but giving newer employees more time, which is fine, but tenured employees now cap out lower. Paid sick time was eliminated, it now uses your PTO, then you go on disability through a third party, which is a pain to deal with. They've been outsourcing everything HR and benefit related so the company no longer has any accountability or flexibility in dealing with work life balance for it employees. If you are young, healthy, and have no kids it's not bad place to start. Get them to pay for your degree after just a year so you don't need student loans, then bail and go to work for a competitor. Advancement will be difficult outside of one of the 4 main locations, Bloomington, Dallas, Atlanta, or Phoenix. Notice they located there 3 big new locations in southern metro areas with weak labor laws and lots of people to churn through. This was by design. The pay system used to favor individual performance much more. Now it's tied much more to company performance, or sales by agency, who are technically independent contractors, not State Farm employees. This has cut my raises in half, and annual bonus by 30-40% for the past couple years.
