Pros
Depending on the particular business unit, team, and manager one has, there is an excellent work - life balance. That work life balance is what ultimately makes up for 80% of the cons of working there and why so many people choose to stay. Also, great people work there for decades (literally) making it almost like a normal dysfunctional family that is willing to work with employees when they fail AND the employee is willing and determined to dust themselves off and get back up again. Also, most important, if one can understand the business and products, almost as well as one-self, and figure out and successfully navigate the politics (and they are considerable there as anywhere else), and one is quietly or effectively (produce results consistently) ambitious, one can create one's own role within the company and chart one's own successful career path at Emerson and within their Local Business Partner community (the LBPs - the outside, customer facing sales force - are a key and critical component of the Emerson business and of employees wanting to advance within North America).
Cons
Salary rate is low for the Austin divisions relative to the overall market and competitors in the process automation universe and relative to other divisions of the overall Emerson Process family. The company knows and states that it can and does trade on salary for the fact that employees can say they work / have worked at Emerson and be credible / competitive. Several newer employees (without stating numbers or grade) are heard to state that they take a pay cut to work at Emerson, but the work - life balance does make up for it. Benefits, also, not so great; again, work - life balance seem to make up for this. Another reviewer mentioned that in order to advance one must travel a great deal, that is true. One must also be willing to travel and frog leap throughout the businesses and, often, world continents to advance either back within the business they started out in or elsewhere in Emerson. This can be challenging for young and seasoned employees alike. There is little successful career development that is not employee motivated (i.e. unless an employee asks their fellow employees, they might not know of what tools and training exist to help them move forward and up). The tools and training are there when HR is asked about them, but they're mostly for individuals headed and hand-picked for the management track; or HR is not engaged and states that managers should (but often don't) know of what is available. And the tools are there if one has a manager who is interested in developing others and aware of said tools. One of the biggest and most glaring cons is that there are few women in leadership positions. They either get to the glass ceiling, get through it, then do not advance from there; or they get tired of the politics and leave for a place with a better environment for women in leadership. The one's that are there and lasting and are not engineers are in the typical HR roles where true change to the business does not seem to take place. Lastly, the ability to innovate the business seems to be completely impossible (with the exception of their Technology division where the mavericks seems to exist and are a necessity for the company's continued success and evolution). This lack of business innovation seems to be owning in large part to the constant re-organisations (one every 6 to 8 months; apparently not that different for most businesses...) that do not have the opportunity to yield the desired results (which are usually unclear...), and the departure of employees and managers for other parts of the business after a few years, however, the company continues to make money...so something's working.