Pros
Opportunities for professional development. Exposure to cultural diversity. Interesting and varies assignments. International chances.
Cons
Rigid, Kafka-esque policies. Navigating hierarchical top-down-driven silos. Clear preference in international assignment for German expatriates, few opportunities for foreign inpatriates. Occasional arrogance of German colleagues, in terms of judgements of working habits of indigeneous employees (a.k.a. the German way of doing stuff must be better because our company and other German companies are very successful internationally). Endlessly analyzing issues to death rather than analyzing enough / acting. Too much rhetoric regarding customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction. Too much cost-saving focus on the easy stuff (employee salaries & benefits, travel, mobile phone bills, etc.) and not enough on the hard stuff - product development costs, supplier management, supply chain management. Too many strategic initiatives & projects launched without proper execution & follow-up, failed projects are not constructively closed, rather are allowed to die quiet deaths or return repackaged as Zombies some time later.