Vantaggi
Free fruit, free ice cream truck in the summer, ok for people new to the job market who have no sense of their worth and are willing to work impossible hours without overtime pay. Good employee stock purchase plan. Employee of the quarter recognition. Community giving. It's possible to survive here as long as you don't look at the outside employment opportunities.
Svantaggi
The cost of this job is all too often one's family, marriage, or health. Even at the VP level people end up having to choose between keeping their family together or keeping their job. People get so overworked that it's common to get stopped in the hallway to hear employee griping. The HR department gives lots of lip service to quality of life but I the following are true stories of former employees : An employee in building services was called back early from recovering from a tumor removal to pack up boxes for laid off employees and then he was laid off when he was done. An employee was forced to choose between being with her mother the day that she died from cancer or lose her job. It was the end of the quarter and the end of the quarter is a hostage situation at BT. Employees are regularly denied breaks at the end of the quarter simply because each quarter is poorly planned. Employees are often demeaned by having to ship software that isn't ready to be deployed, simply to get revenue recognition. The CEO is all about image. It's not unusual for him to hint to employees that they should put positive reviews up here. I cringed when I saw that he publicized the murder of an employee in the Portsmouth, NH office while at the same time the company could be cold blooded to employees with ill family members. "FMLA? What's that?" There is little to no career path. Managers treat annual reviews like they are a necessary evil and executives are often immune from wage freezes. Once you leave BT and go to another employer you realize how undervalued you were and how poor the quality of work/life balance was. The CEO used to be known for parking his Porsche in the community college lot so that the employees wouldn't get a hint of how well off he was. Surfing the insider trading boards is an exercise in masochism that some employees indulge in. The HR department doesn't participate in the employee quality of life. They seem to be there to defend the company against lawsuits. When the CEO reads a book that inspires him he'll change the organization massively and sometimes negatively without getting employee feedback.