Pros
It's clear when you talk to colleagues that have been with the company for a long time that working for P&G used to be grand. It's hard to make it through a week without somebody waxing nostalgic about the good old days when the company had a powerhouse R&D organization paired with the most elite marketers in the world. Some policies and practices (namely pay and a few benefits) still reflect that caliber of company and its those aspects that keep good people around.
Cons
Since the mid-90s, executives have consistently embarked on a path of systematically gutting the organization of most core competencies. In a never-ending march to lower costs, they have outsourced so much of the company's operations that employees are often little more than rubber-stamping yes-men with no grasp of the details involved in their work. Middle management is a cesspool of positive thinking zealots who dismiss uncomfortable facts and manage by political popularity rather than business impact or results. What success the company has continued to realize is typically driven by experienced personnel who were around back in the days that P&Gers actually did real work. As these people retire, the organization will continue to suffer brain drain until all that's left are people who blindly oversee vendors while reading Rhonda Byrne's "The Promise". Sadly, positive thinking will not be enough to right this ship.
