Vantaggi
Impossible to be fired for poor performance. Possibility of a large voluntary redundancy payoff.
Svantaggi
Quasi-military organisational structure. Employees are expected to know the grade of everyone they interact with, and whether they’re allowed to speak to them directly or disagree with them. Adversarial relationships with other teams. Frequent instructions to withhold data or otherwise deliberately obstruct colleagues in their work. Lip service to becoming more data driven, but key technical decisions made by unqualified people managers, and displaying data/programming skills is VERY career limiting. Face time valued over productivity. Pressure to come to the office even when ill. “Non-essential” spending like IT cut to the bone, with predictable results.