Pros
-Clients are all interesting and very high-profile, so the exposure to some big names is always a plus -Nice office -Salary is above industry standards -Work/life balance is solid. Always managed to leave on time but this is not necessarily a good sign...
Cons
-The work is not very exciting. The company conveys this image of being more of an elite consultancy and you do get this impression when visiting the website. However, what the company actually is more of an upscale version of DODS Monitoring, Randalls or DeHavilland. 90% of the work is 'monitoring' and producing biweekly, weekly or monthly reports which gets incredibly tiresome and repetitive. It is not challenging at all nor is it intellectually stimulating and it begins to feel a lot like brain drain after a while and the reports start to feel less like something super comprehensive and sophisticated and more like a glorified newsletter. -Related to the above, the client work is not diverse enough. Some 80% of our time I would say is spent on a single client. I thought I was going to go mad if I had to write another note on tobacco. -I feel like the company infantilises all of its researchers and micro-manages too much. It's quite bizarre to me that they put in so much effort into 'training' its researchers when the work is so easy and straight forward and in 99% of cases is secondary research, not primary, so there really is not too much to learn. The going back and forth with notes as well to get them proof read is tiresome and annoying as well. All of us are more than capable of proof reading our own work and sending it off to the client. It is also a huge waste of time for someone senior to be proof reading a very short and straight forward note (which in most cases consists of just paraphrasing from an article). Sometimes I've had people spent over an hour working on proof reading. It's a massive waste of time for everyone. -Working from home was great and we all felt like the company had our backs initially and we felt supported. But then we got an email one day telling us we have to come back to the office four days a week and this really felt like a huge betrayal for many of us. It is no coincidence the exile started after this policy was re-introduced. We were not consulted on this whatsoever by any of the seniors, there was no transparency and the email just felt rude, as though the directors were talking down on us. The only day we get to work from home is a Friday - which is also the day when a certain someone works from home and has been doing so for the past few years. Coincidence? Definitely not. Further to the working from home/office point. The rationale behind us coming into the office was the same nonsense spewed by other corporate entities - all about 'team work' and 'collaboration' but that is pure nonsense at this company. There is no team work or collaboration at this company because the work we do does not require it at all. The office is by far the most quiet office I've ever come across, no one talks, you put on your headphones and get to work on the report or note you have to draft and that is it. There is no need for cooperation or team work simply because the very nature of the work does not require it because the company is more than happy with sticking to offering this one single service and that's it. So there really is no good reason for any of us to be in the office at all other than to probably make sure the expensive rent for the office is worth it. -Room for growth and development. I don't think there are any. Nothing actually happens when you're promoted or get a salary increase. Absolutely nothing. -Communication is quite bad from the seniors to all the juniors. No one from the top tells us anything, its all very secretive, and we end up having to find things out from the managers. During lockdown we were told (I will not go into specifics) we could do one thing and got full support for it and then few months down the line it's suddenly unacceptable.