Pros
I can really only think of one; good brand recognition when it comes to people looking to buy and have access to big data. However, the quality of said big data is another story altogether. People know who you are, but think a lot of what you do/deliver is garbage.
Cons
Wow…..where to begin. Let me first say I was one of the poor unfortunate soul’s that got acquired by this mess of a company and then had to fight my way out of it. That being said, I saw no difference internally from the people who got acquired or those who were hired directly. As for the cons, let’s try to break this down by categories maybe: MANAGEMENT: In all my years of professional experience, I have never seen a company with no many useless levels of middle management. To illustrate this, to get from my boss to the CEO (and its not like I was some low level analyst or fresh college grad) there where at least 10 levels of managers, all of which contributed absolutely nothing to sales efforts or did any client work whatsoever. They literally just had conference calls and meetings to plan the next conference call or meeting. To make matters worse, they were also some of the most unintelligent and incompetent people I have ever met. About once every month or two, we would get some new “management realignment” email detailing all the “big changes” that were just implemented. Not once did I recognize more than one or two of the names, and not once did it EVER change ANYTHING I did for my actual job. It was just a bunch of useless puppets jockeying for a better job title; all of which contributed zero to any real substantial work. PEOPLE: One of the saddest groups of employees I have ever encountered. When I first started, I was stunned by the level of overall sloppiness that I saw. Stained/wrinkled clothes, bed head hair, body odor, overall posture and body language that just screams “I’m depressed”, and anti-social behavior. However, the longer I was there; I recognized the cause was really two-fold. First, IHS does not hire exceptionally smart or talented people; they go for the bottom of barrel primarily because their compensation (see below) is such a joke. Second, once you start at this company, you realize you will have the same job/responsibilities/income for the rest of your life and people eventually just “give up”. It is an emotionally/mentally/physical draining place to work at; exacerbated by the quality of people that have working there. An absolutely toxic environment. COMPENSATION: Some, if not THE, lowest you will find in the market. The constant frustration with your horrific pay is also coupled with the fact that you will NEVER be promoted to any higher level at this place. I met people who had been there 20+ years and could count the number of promotions they had heard about on one hand. It’s completely soul crushing to know that no matter how hard you work or how much effort you put into something, you will NEVER receive a substantial bonus (everyone in the entire company gets within 1-2% points of the same bonus; if/when they actually pay a bonus), NEVER get a substantial raise (if you get one at all, it’s always 1-3%, but even that is rare), and NEVER get promoted. This whole structure results in people doing the least amount of effort to perform any task and having no pride in their work; it’s just awful. CULTURE: Without question, the most toxic I have ever been exposed to. Pettiness, immaturity, and backstabbing are staples to middle management throughout this entire place. Most of the time it felt like working in a jr high school with the unpopular means kids being in charge. Firings happen over nothing more than personal reasons, employee collaboration is crushed at every turn, and even personal friendships rarely exist at this place. It’s like everyone blames everyone else for the current state of affairs their career/life is in. It’s really sad.