Pros
Community Building: pizza/beer Fridays, watching animations together as a studio, holiday parties, picture days, out of office event outings, community board/social media page, and office success celebrations (like when we won an Emmy - whoop whoop!), employee birthday celebrations, and the office signs cards when people are really sick/hurt/grieving. Continued Education: bi-weekly figure drawing, new software training, and database tutorials. Personal/Family Care: insurance (health/dental), daycare assistance, office allows children/pets, office yoga days, and local gym partnership. Career Advancement: leadership positions are selected from existing employees (and not brought in from outside), employees are encouraged to display their other skillsets and give their input on company progression, and employees may pitch artistic style/show ideas. Life Style: The office is flexible on when you have to show up to work and how long you can take for a lunch break. You can take time off when you are sick, hurt, sad, have an emergency, etc without feeling guilty or worrying about your job security. Long hours of work are compensated. You can negotiate leaving early and overtime. Leadership: Your superiors want you to do well, and will do whatever is in their power to assist you (new equipment, software update, restrategize pipeline, etc.) Longevity: The Executive Producer is a tiger and will stop at nothing to make sure this company does well. Yes, layoffs happen, but if they can keep you, an effort will be made!
Cons
Leadership: Your department lead will make or break your experience. You're dealing with people who have a variety of personality traits and styles of interacting with subordinates. Some are respectful, kind, and a pleasure to be around, others are cold, rude, and a source of constant anxiety. Some make sure that every person on their team has an equal opportunity to learn new practices, while others play favorites, and make you jump through hoops to find out what information they told others simply. Some leads are mindful of discriminatory practices, some could use some help in that area. Career Advancement: Let's revisit discriminatory practices and how some people could use some help in that area... yeah, those people have a lot of power when it comes to your advancement. Pay: When I started, I was promised quarterly reviews, several opportunities for pay raises, etc. I was with the company for many years, saw many wages of employees new and old, and getting decent pay is not likely to happen unless you become a lead (and I already addressed your chances in Career Advancement above). All Lives Matter: Let's just talk about the elephant in the room, and that's that we work on offensive shows. Race, gender, sexuality, age, body type, etc - nothing's off the table. Most of the people I worked with are progressive, and try to treat everyone with respect, but we could all use some help with how to not alienate people around us. There have been many days when I had to walk out of the office because the conversation around me (by my superior or peers) made me want to put in my 2 weeks notice. Community Building: Again, your department lead will make or break your experience. Some leads encourage team members to help each other and get along, others create unhealthy competitiveness and will encourage isolation (there's no reason people on a team of less than 20 don't know each other's names after a year). Longevity: I started out excited about my career with the company, but by the second year, knew that my time would be short. There are so many other companies that will genuinely encourage you to be a better artist and person (not just for the company's sake, but because they care about you). Only those in the "in crowd" of the leaders are celebrated, and it's not healthy to go years feeling undervalued or unappreciated.