Vantaggi
The mantra is that Version 1 is a great place to work not an easy place to work. In general I agree with that, but the people from bottom to top are easy to work with, everybody is really helpful and supportive, and I definitely see Version 1 as a great group of people rather than an organisation. The core values are lived and believed in, and there is a great deal of well earned faith in the strength in balance culture. I've never been part of such a supportive organisation before that genuinely cares about its customers over pennies on the bottom line.
Svantaggi
A major bugbear for me is the lack of an annual salary review. No matter what the rate of inflation, there is no review. In the time I've been with Version 1, my salary hasn't been visibly reviewed against market rates either. The normal route for salary increases is via the internal CPD promotions system, and once you get to a certain level each step is a multi-year journey. That means every year you're taking a real-world pay cut, although to be fair there are routes for justified pay increases outside the CPD process, they're just not advertised. Another issue is leave allocation - it's very tight for the services sector - another three days would bring it up to average. My last real con is the sick leave - for anybody coming out of the public sector it's a bit scary and it's worth thinking about supplemental insurance.