Pros
I met some really great people on other teams. The work can be interesting when you're allowed to really dive into it and not get bogged down with meetings and busy work. Depending on who you work for there can be flexibility in your schedule and opportunities to work from home/telecommute. The flexibility was great; unfortunately this didn't translate into work/life balance. Summer hours available. If you've never had summer hours before this would be a plus. However, if you've ever worked for a different company that provides summer hours you're more likely to see this as a faux benefit that you work extra hours for only to not even be able to leave early.
Cons
Work/life balance means something different to everyone, but generally speaking, extremely long hours on a regular basis is bad for work/life balance. In order to get your job done in a client role and do a GOOD job, you need to work endless hours and on weekends, many times 16hr+ days because teams aren't properly staffed and expectations are truly unrealistic. This was deemed normal to get the job done. If your supervisor is a workaholic your experience will be even worse. Summer hours were a joke because you have to work extra for two weeks to be able to leave early every other Friday...but that almost NEVER happens! So you work extra to not even get to use the benefit. Also, many companies don't make you work extra for summer hours, and most people I knew elsewhere got them every week, not every two weeks. NPD is extremely siloed, so some sectors may be completely different than others, but there is little to no interaction or even education on other sectors so you feel like you're working for a separate company. Little visibility to upper management unless you work in Port Washington. Pay is NOT adequate for hours worked and health insurance was the most expensive I've ever had. Bonuses were the smallest I've ever seen. Toxic work environments with weak managers who are tough on getting admin work done, but refuse to deal with poor performers who lack necessary client service skills. Those with bad people skills tend to be invested in and get promoted. HIGH turnover between layoffs and people moving on to greener pastures. Data quality...where do I even start? It's abysmal. You constantly have to be the bearer of bad news and try to hide major mistakes and get yelled at by your clients because promises are made without doing QA checks and data is pushed out in order to be "good enough" and then discovered to have MAJOR inaccuracies. Stagnant career opportunities. Someone asked in a town hall meeting if they would consider adding back some levels they got rid of and they refused. It's hard to move around or feel like you're progressing in your career when you know there's no place for you to go. Essentially zero training, professional development, etc makes you feel like they don't invest in their employees. Too much busy work that keeps you from doing your job. Excessive growth targets that lead to bad behavior, poor decision making, and "do whatever it takes to make a sale" attitude. Antiquated software systems that make your job ten times harder and extremely inefficient because they didn't want to do away with the system they produced in-house, even though it lacks basic functions for data users.
