Pros
+ Big budgets, which lets us work on big projects and hire talented consultants. + Nice new head office (if you manage to find a seat there) with fantastic lunch restaurants in the house. + Top management is giving good attention to digitalization, and has now even caught the agile bug! + If you are a nice guy and good at office politics, you can thrive. + Pretty nice employee benefits. As a neutral point, be aware that we don’t have a very strong corporate culture, but subcultures which differ somewhat, e.g. the ex-Pohjola insurance people (who came with the merger), the corporate bankers (can be recognized from their fancier outfits), and the ex-Nokians (often the savviest politicians, watch out!)
Cons
- You have to please everybody, or someone in the organization will find a way to undermine your efforts. - Advancement is not based on your achievements but on your popularity and success in politics. Cronyism is widespread. - At the head office our time tends to go into navigating the political web and coordinating with a load of matrix functions, so it is rather hard to find time for actual productive work. - Decisions seem often arbitrary which frustrates people, e.g. millions are invested into a big project, which is soon stopped, and later again started, without clear logic of why (the real answer is usually a political matter). - Projects have a tendency to get stuck due to lack of ability to manage dependencies at the corporate level. - The corporate organization gets changed every couple of years, with associated layoffs/packages. This always triggers a period of confusion, loss of productivity and can impact motivation (one of these changes is going on right now - hopefully you will see more positive reviews by 2020 or so, as things settle!)