Pros
You know this is a fine company to work. The work-life balance thing is fine as long as you do what's expected. It's a fast paced business with high expectations depending on the role you have. It's all what you make it to be as is any job. Benefits are comparable with others in the area. Pay is the same. Management varies depending on the department. Overall this is a good place to work. There are regular little activities to engage employees that start with little get togethers monthly in the break room and/or outside depending on weather. Food trucks or ice cream trucks now and again. They're always leaving little mementos on desks to commemorate holidays and running little contests to engage people. A lot of effort goes into that. Break room has a steady supply of fresh fruit, coffees, water, sodas (subsidized). There's free pretzels and a few other snacks. Vending machines are subsidized as well.
Cons
There are A LOT of spoiled, entitled people here who are pouting right now with the change of leadership, loss of little perks and just refusing to accept change. Yes some of the complaints people have made are legitimate. Upper management mismanaged the bonus program which cost everyone a portion of their bonus. It wasn't communicated out until it was too late. However the people involved in that are no longer with the company and the management that replaced them worked to actually make sure people got something instead of nothing. As a result small programs were cut to supplement the money they needed. (My opinion only). The company who has taken over, Cinven, has put in a CEO from another country who is struggling to adjust to the way the culture of BAL is used to be treated. Unfortunately the employees are not cutting him any slack at all and are whining at anything they can. There is no sugar coating remarks and criticisms with certain cultures in Europe and people at BAL don't seem to be used to having to deal with that. Overall there's really no cons other than the general attitude of employees who just seem to be pouting. If you can look past the few causing constant ripples over anything they can, things are fine. Yes I was at the meeting a previous poster complained about on here about the CEO being against women or what not. That is not at all what he said but as stated above people are looking for any reason to complain about him. Yes he did call out two instances of people having children affecting their work. I don't care who you are - you shouldn't have a kid on your lab during a meeting with a potential/current client.