Vantaggi
Rigorous application process. Always felt like fellow employees were technically proficient, mission-focused, and motivated. The work itself was challenging and exciting. I always felt like I was adding value to the customer organization and was constantly given positive feed back. In the beginning the company was appropriately hands-off as far as micro-managing the analysts. You were able to work closely with more experienced members that stretched back to the first days of the company and its partnerships with the client. It was a true example of being mentored to greater amounts of technical proficiency and leadership responsibility and interactions with the customer.
Svantaggi
The company had a written policy that they would cover the (reasonable) costs of technical training for personal and company skills enhancement. Numerous requests, my own as well as others, were accepted in paper form but never returned. They just seemingly disappeared down a rabbit hole. The company also had a tremendous amount of overhead positions that did not earn any money for the company. As more and more overhead was taken on over the months, it made analysts feel like they were cash cows for the company but little else. There was very little opportunity to transfer to other locations even when those positions became open. When forced to work overtime, the company would not pay any more money, even if you had to work on military timelines (12 hour days for one to two weeks at a time. A field exercise for example). Lastly, the company was transparent in the beginning, with various teams helping each other frequently. But over the months less and less flowed down until it seemed as though the company was purposefully not allowing communication between teams, and providing very little leadership.