Vantaggi
MetLife offers a good benefits package including 401K matching. The enterprise is massive and the need for a variety of skills in IT engineering, administration and management is available. Recent massive layoffs may make for good opportunities for advancement as they rebuilt their enterprise resource teams in North Carolina. The company is expanding internationally, so having international experience may benefit you. If you move through corporate politics with alacrity, this may be a good company for you. For years they have had good work-from-home policies, but now that they are focusing on co-location in North Carolina, they have stated that this will be changing in the future.
Svantaggi
Like many public companies, the emphasis is clearly on their financial performance above everything else. Recent history is a good example. MetLife is laying off more than 2,000 of it's most experienced employees in the northeast to move the majority of its domestic staff to North Carolina in exchange for tax considerations. Management has done this without sufficiently understanding what impact this will have on their ability to maintain an effective IT infrastructure, but instead are moving quickly to realize a high short term gain in salary and real estate costs. The institutional knowledge of how to get things done has been strongly impacted by forced turnover and there is a significant amount of disorder and inefficiency in their IT processes. Translation: expect long hours.