Vantaggi
1. They serve actual people who are at their most vulnerable. That right there is a huge motivator. 2. They have a huge devotion - both in practice and financially - to home-grown technical solutions to solve their business problems. 3. People are helpful and express gratitude when you help them. I sat with an IT team and, unlike at many places, our expertise was visibly appreciated.
Svantaggi
Despite their deference to technology, it's very decentralized - understandably - and there are tons of redundancies, especially around program data collection. A lot of folks didn't really seem to grasp how much of a blocker a lack of standardization was on the progress on some of the very ambitious projects they wanted to accomplish. Additionally, despite an adherence to Agile software development methodology, they play fast and loose with deadlines for release, as there are often times too many cooks in the kitchen and requirements would sneak their way into the mix way after development started (I experienced major functionality requirements coming in during the LAST WEEK of development for my project).