Pros
There is an inclusive, progressive employee benefits scheme that involves all employees. The company on the whole produces good quality products and services (typically as a result of acquiring companies with good quality products and services). There are many extremely talented, high-calibre employees at lower tiers of the organisation.
Cons
Career progression does not appear to be based on merit. There are a lot of incapable and/or ineffective mid- and high-level managers throughout the business, and this negatively affects morale, career progression and job satisfaction. I was going to write that it is difficult to see how some of them got and continue to keep their jobs, but then I realised that they get and continue to keep their jobs by being good at taking undue credit for work that, in reality, is being initiated, planned, managed and carried out by others (on more than one occasion I saw documents that I had written circulate back to me, having been sent out by one of my senior colleagues and presented as their own work). The entire company has a very short-term mindset, which is a result of it being aggressively sales-focused. This is often to the detriment of other departments, and often creates perverse incentives. There is chronic misalignment of teams, departments, functions and objectives, so that parts of the business operated in isolation or even, at times, in opposition. There is almost endemic neglect of marketing as a skill and a function. I have never worked at a company where marketing is so misunderstood, disrespected or undervalued: I had six managers in five years - and I had marketing colleagues who had even more than that - which is a great indication that the senior management don't have a strategy for you. I have never worked at a company where morale in the marketing team was so low. If a marketer asked me whether they should go for a job at IHS I would beg them not to apply.
