Pros
- It's basically impossible to get fired - There is no risk the company will EVER go out of business - There is like no work, ever. Whole teams go literally weeks at a time with zero work assigned, during which time they can simply slack off (this could be considered a pro or a con) - Theoretically lots of opportunity to switch career path or technology, though I'm not sure how true that is in practice
Cons
One word: bureaucracy. Every single individual task required to deliver software is broken down into hundreds of unnecessary teams. There is literally no feature of the software I work on that I couldn't have built with three guys in a long weekend. By creating such a baffling, unnecessary mess of overlapping responsibilities and interests, the company makes it literally impossible to do basically anything. I don't think I would have believed it could be this bad if I hadn't seen it for myself. "Too many cooks" doesn't even remotely begin to capture the depth of the brokenness. Creating software at chase is like trying to make a single omelette with 400 people.