Pros
-high-profile collaborators (starchitects). -great office hours and work/life balance. -most people are generally nice. -generally if you start on a project you will be on it through CA - no hand-offs after the design phase. -if you have no ambition, it's a good place to disappear into the woodwork and coast for 25-30 years doing the same thing.
Cons
Where to begin... -the firm is divided into seven studios, each under the wing of one partner. None of them collaborate, and no resources are shared. For a firm of this size and caliber it is amazing that there is not so much as a CAD standard folder, let alone true collaboration. 4-5 of the principals are good people, and generally their employees seem happy. 2-3 of them create sheer misery. Where you land determines much about your experience there. -benefits are terrible given the size of the company. Sub-par health plan, no 401k matching, bare minimum PTO/personal time, no company support for professional growth, AIA, NCARB, etc.. And MOST IMPORTANT: you are not allowed to take any PTO days for the first YEAR of employment, barring special request. -the entire firm exists for the benefit of the partners. The rest of the firm makes very little money, has very little opportunity for vertical growth, and have very little client contact. This leads to a culture where most of the staff is either young people straight out of school, or 55-70 year old veteran draftsmen with no ambition. Nothing in between. To quote a long-time staffer: "most people who want to become managers end up leaving". -the in-house design department (used for non-starchitect projects) is completely un-integrated into the firm at large. No one seems to know what they want this relationship to be, so there is constant in-fighting, resentment, and lack of communication between the two. -yearly performance/salary reviews never occur. Ever. So there is effectively no way for employees to voice concerns, share ideas, or check in regarding how their career path is progressing. -generally it appears to take 8-10 years to be considered for an Associateship, and about 25 years for partnership. That is a lot of years of being underpaid and underwhelmed. -although the firm used to be more versatile, they EXCLUSIVELY work in the highrise multifamily residential sector. No plan for when the market crashes again, and they don't seem to be concerned. If you're interested in varying project types, this is not the place for you. -virtually zero effort into continuing education. All expertise lies in the partners, the employees are just robots. No seminars, no encouragement of AIA participation, and lunch & learns are only open to a pre-selected few employees, not the larger staff. -depressing office that feels more like an expeditor's office than an architecture firm. Stacks of drawings up to the ceiling, disorder, sad lighting, and no employees have so much as a family photo around.