Pros
Visa has world wide brand recognition and offers exposure to a global economic picture that few companies enjoy. On the benefits front, they are still relatively good including a 2-to-1 match on 401k contributions on the first 3%. Visa also still has a defined pension plan on top of the 401k which is increasingly rare.
Cons
Promotions opportunities are vaporware. You can jump through all the hoops and receive excellent ratings year over year only to be told that they are not allowed to do any promotions that year. Higher level positions often go unfilled or end up being filled by ex-employees that are hired back after they quit or took early retirement. The only internal promotions are reserved for senior managements' pets. You are more likely to be promoted for talking big and doing nothing, then busting your hump year over year. We hear a lot about pushing for innovation, but it comes with the caveat that there is zero tolerance for failure. We also in theory have a 90/10 program that would allow employees to spend 10% of their time working on things that are not directly related to their position. It is meant to remove barriers and constraints to allow people to explore new ideas in a relatively unfettered way. The issue is that the Global Engineering group has so formalized it that innovation is handled as a project. It shows a complete lack of trust in employees because management has to make sure ever second of your 50+ hours a week is accounted for. While benefits are still decent, they are nothing like they were 5 - 6 years ago. At the trajectory they are on, I would expect Visa's benefits to be just as lackluster as anyone other company in the next 3 to 5 years. There is a lot of social activism in the company and nanny mentality. For example, we once had a chintzy free beverage program that allowed employees to get 3 free sodas or small bottles of water each day. A small group complained about the health and environmental impacts so they discontinued the program. Visa is also proud of being an LGBT employer of choice, but does not seem to see any value in being a top employer for working parents. That political/social bias is prevalent through out the company and comes off as subtle hostility to anyone with a more moderate or traditional bias.
