Good learning opportunity, but get out as fast as you can
Pros
MSG can be a great short-term experience for high-achieving recent grads or career switchers that need a chance to prove themselves. It can be a valuable stepping stone - but do NOT get yourself in the trap of thinking it is anything more than that. MSG will continue to throw more and more responsibility at you so long as you are capable of handling it... which can be a great opportunity to develop your skills and flesh out your resume. They will absolutely suck you dry, and you should do the exact same to them. Squeeze every single learning opportunity out of them that you can, then leave for bigger and better opportunities for career growth. You will have great opportunities to develop here and take on responsibilities far above your "pay grade" - use it, learn from it, and then move on to a place that will actually value your skills. This is exactly why MSG has such a huge turnover problem - high achievers come in expecting that if they lean into the extremely demanding work culture (extreme amounts of late night, weekend, and holiday work are absolutely expected to be seen as a valuable contributor), they will be rewarded appropriately. That is absolutely not the case, and as a result, the vast majority of high achievers are gone within 1-1.5 years... and VERY easily securing offers with 50%+ higher salary.
Cons
The pay is atrocious, full stop. Leadership is acutely aware of this and could not care less. Do not waste your breath with leadership on this topic. The absolute highest raise you will ever see here is 5%, and I am aware of more than one situation where they promoted people without a raise at all - not even a cost of living adjustment. It's a sweatshop, and they have zero shame about it. To make any kind of headway at MSG, you need to be prepared to work a LOT of extra hours. Lots of late night, weekend, and holiday work. To some degree, this is to be expected during proposal season, but MSG takes it to an extreme that is completely unsustainable. Expect to work every single weekend and holiday from about Memorial day through Labor Day. At one point, we were scolded by leadership in a meeting for not effectively hiding these lengthy hours from clients - we were literally told to delay our email messages in Outlook so that clients would receive our emails at 9am instead of 2am, for example. Yes, reasonable advice... but the fact that this conversation even needed to happen in a whole-group setting should be a giant red flag for their work culture. When I started actively searching for a new role before I left MSG, I did not want to leave - I just wanted more respect and financial stability. When I spoke to managers and mentors within MSG about this, their advice was to get the heck out of there as soon as I could. Most of them also disclosed that they were actively looking for new positions as well. Many of them actively facilitated my job search. This should be another giant red flag. There are a thousand other things I would love to address (for example, the extremely concerning outlook for MSG's financial stability, the very poor perception of MSG among its competitors, etc), but I'll just sum up my personal experience: MSG was an extremely valuable career development experience for me. I learned so many skills there that launched me onto a career track where I could be truly successful and highly valued by my employer. However, my time at MSG also resulted in extreme personal burnout, deep discouragement about my professional future, and highly disruptive financial instability. If you make the most of it and go in with eyes wide open, it is a truly valuable learning experience... but do NOT get trapped into staying for more than about 18 months maximum. Do NOT kid yourself that you will be the one to make this place change its horrendous culture. They know they're using you... and they don't care. Use them right back to learn everything you can, then move on to bigger and better things.
