Vantaggi
Diversity of skills and staff experience, opportunities to network within the company, and potential to work in different locations and disciplines for the motivated and intellectually curious.
Svantaggi
The company leadership answers to the shareholders, full stop. Several big acquisitions (Cardno most recently) have notably shifted the culture toward ever greater reliance on metrics reporting and zero-tolerance emphasis on utilization (the dumbest metric to track because of its ripple effects on other indicators, but the no-brainer first talking point from the management consultants). Risk management is out of control, but not doing what it's supposed to, presumably because of the competing profit motives exerting greater pressure on employees ans managers. It had promise at one point to follow a different path from the other AE mega-firms, but that's been abandoned as the institutional investors have pushed harder for squeezing more revenue out of clients. Its low-margin areas of innovation and distinction are likely not going to be around much longer. As a result, day to day interaction with other employees is increasingly transactional and competitive.