Pros
Lots of opportunities to provide value
Cons
Poor leadership at the C-level. CIO has no control over the direction of the IT landscape beyond what is dictated to her by the CEO and other business owners.
The IT environment is almost solely controlled by the demands of the business at the cost of being able to manage and adapt to needs.
20 years behind the market in the adoption of cloud technology. Existing cloud strategy was built by engineers pressed into the role of architects and learning as they progressed along. No automation or DevOps presence whatsoever outside what the platform teams use to simplify their own workloads.
Remote work is considered a 4-letter word and is extremely frowned upon as anything other than an as-needed and pre-approved option.
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery are still done using backups and shadow copies of key infrastructure, and those key systems are decided upon at the time the tests are planned instead of testing the company's infrastructure in its entirety. Data centers are geographically separated, but are significantly disparate in what is physically hosted and accessible.
Recognition and rewards are overtly encouraged, but are covertly handed out based on the level of visibility and impact to the business and stakeholders.
Senior leadership constantly touts open-door policy and approachability, but give off vibes and impressions opposite of the overt policy.
The company puts on a show of being diverse and inclusive. Case in point, the hiring of a female CIO. The problem is that working within an 'old boys network' leadership, it doesn't matter how inclusive and diverse the company appears because those elements are never given the opportunity to show their value.