Pros
Brand recognition opens doors, and some teams have technically skilled people worth learning from.
Cons
*Performance management is used as an exit mechanism rather than a genuine development tool. PIPs are issued after extended bench periods, sometimes 6+ months, with the apparent goal of avoiding redundancy payouts and disqualifying employees from jobseeker's allowance. If you're on the bench, start planning your exit early. *In my case, the assigned people manager had no idea what my role was or what I was working on, yet still submitted dismissive one and two line performance reviews. This continued until the client, ASML, intervened and asked them to stop, as they were satisfied with my work. That a client had to defend an employee to their own employer says everything about how people management works here. *Compensation is opaque by design. Offers are deliberately structured to obscure the true salary in contracts, with the remainder labelled as benefits that managers routinely block employees from actually claiming (e.g. clothing allowances). Get everything in writing and confirmed by HR, not just your manager, before signing. *Offshoring is the primary strategic direction. The race is on to move roles to India, and if your job can be offshored, it likely will be. The management model applied to offshore teams is hierarchical and high-pressure, which flows back to affect how onshore employees are managed too.
