Pros
Before the merger with DATATEL, SGHE was a decent place to work. Many of the developers and architects were first-rate, but held down by bad decisions. Who in their right minds switches from Java to Groovy as the development language for enterprise-level software?
Cons
There was still too large a group of middle management that didn't really do more than waste time, and not enough experienced product marketing folks to drive product direction. If you look up leadership traits you'd have seen Darrin, the new CTO (before the merger), had none. He'd show up at the Malvern office and only Sr. management would know he was there. They tried once to help him with this, but he just walked around the building and waved like he was the Queen. Probably the most inept technical person in the company - none of the technical people in Malvern thought he had a clue. Yet good, solid managers got sidelined. Never took responsibility for bad decisions, blamed the execution. Yet they kept him through the buyout. Then Speers comes in, and the day after he was on-site with the news about the buy-out (hardly a merger when the little company has financial backing and buys the one four times its size) major layoffs started. Some of the brightest architects, managers, internal support, and other people were gone within the month, then layoffs continued for the next year or so. Some good folks were kept, probably because they at least had years of background with their respective products to be irreplaceable. Other people left because the culture became sick, and are happier for it (me!).