Pros
I worked at stress engineering for well over ten years of my career. I met some great people (all of whom were my peers). As an engineer, I could work on just about anything that I wanted to work on. I had the flexibility of schedule, flexibility of client selection, and solved many challenging problems. I worked in the Cincinnati office, which was the satellite campus and was always looked down upon by Houston (main campus). I didn't work with those people much, but I can assume they have the same positives. Compensation was excellent. You could make a lot of money.
Cons
Where do I begin? First of all the management in the office I worked in was a bunch of folks with over inflated egos of themselves who treated their subordinates in a terrible manner. I was harassed by the good old boys club. The company chews up young employees. Forced overtime is common. If you didn't fit the culture then they found ways to harass you until you quit. There were really good engineers who were mistreated until they quit. They met every requirement of the job but were forced out because they couldn't be controlled or were unfriendly to senior management and there culture. I watched several peers around me get pushed out the door and I didn't think it could happen to me. I saw it all around me but was mistaken. I expected to retire here. At review time some management would force subordinates to gang up on people they didn't like or were fall guys for poor project performance to hide their own deficiencies. Management has there own rules. They could say and do as they pleased. It was a toxic environment. There was no training for employees. If you are considering employment here you should not. Its a broken company with terrible management. There was no diversity at this company. Friends and family only.