Pros
Ferguson is a very well-established company and I have yet to see as many seriously-tenured people in a company as I have here. These people are the real deal, they came on a long time ago (40-50 years and climbing) and they love what they do and who they do it for. This can't be denied, so its important to know that if you find a place here and you have the right management and guidance, you'll be another one of these people. There's a deep pride in the company culture, this isn't a startup, it's a long-standing, established business with decades of rich history. They have cutting-edge facilities around the world, a beautiful new corporate office in Newport News, Virginia, and lots of places to go. You can work in a corporate environment, (they have plenty of remote and hybrid positions), or in a branch or distribution center. Plenty of variety, and I'd imagine those who work "boots on the ground" in those satellite locations will be happier, as they have a much more family-unit feel than corporate does. There are opportunities to move into other positions and teams which need those people typically selected from the top in the pool. Teams also are tight-knit and proud of the work that they do, and are eager to help one another out.
Cons
This is where gets complicated, and again, your mileage will definitely vary. If you find the RIGHT team, and the RIGHT management to help you get started, then you're going to do well. My first manager here has to be one of the best managers I've had in over 25 years of my career. She was tough, no-nonsense, but exceptionally fair and clear with her expectations. She was a pleasure to speak with and I felt that if something negative from above were to roll downhill, she'd be there to take the brunt, incredibly defensive of the people that worked for her. This can't be denied. My second assignment, seen as as a 2nd or 3rd-level bump didn't work as smoothly at all. There was virtually no overhead guidance, you got an overview (mostly from a very helpful team), but then when things crashed down it was blamed on issues from above. Now, I'm not going to say "things from above" weren't an issue, they were, but you felt scared at times. Eventually management was made more stable, I had an extremely knowledgeable supervisor who made sure we all got additional, formal training on each and every thing we needed, spent hours one-on-one working to improve things, despite the fact that she was clearly overloaded with other duties, many technical ones for which she seemed to be the only one who could handle them. As to corporate, it was tough to get a read on upper-management, as unless it says "VP" after your name you're so insulated from them that it probably doesn't matter. There were the typical things floating around, such as common layoffs when things get dicey, cost-cutting measures, although in my experience the company's IT department spent large sums of money upgrading old infrastructure and developing new systems and technologies with seemingly little thought to cost. As to pay, my impression is that you'll start on the lower-range of pay for a particular position, raises will be distributed rarely. Managers are clearly pressured to use a forced distribution system with performance reviews, where the possibility of achieving exceptionally high scores seems unlikely, thus limiting bonuses, raises or promotions. Sadly this seems to be more and more common in companies, and Ferguson is no exception here. Understand that unless you wind up with serious tenure or somehow reinvent a very important wheel, increases in pay are going to be slow in coming. Keep an eye on the job market because Ferguson tends to cut people when things look bad. I was let go as a "staff reduction" only several months into my position on the team. This is not uncommon from what I've heard, just before I initially started the company was on a hiring freeze, followed by some serious hiring and then the door slammed shut abruptly until another round of layoffs. There doesn't seem to be a way to convince management that bad things happen in business and you can't recycle your staff like aluminum or glass each time. I get the impression that under the current regime, gaining enough traction to not be the one with the shortest tenure the next time they shift from "hot" to "cold" and keep your job is increasingly impossible. Keep your resume polished and prepare for that shift. It happens at Ferguson.