Vantaggi
Out of college, the Research Associate position can be a great first job. Decent pay ($40K), and great, young colleagues. Decent benefits and 401k matching. Growing company with opportunities to move up, however, there are caveats (see cons) Once a quarter or so you get a free ticket to a baseball game with $20 to spend as well.
Svantaggi
Monotonous work. Many managers are inexperienced and overbearing. Upper management is out of touch with best research practices and they constantly try to drive the processes that are used by the researchers instead of results that are achieved. Even if you are promoted, you you are still undervalued/under paid and overworked. And the opportunity to move up again is many years off. I can't imagine staying at this company for the years required to move up vertically 2 steps. Broken metrics system which does not reward the researchers who actually provide the most value to clients.