Pros
Lofty but achievable goals, driven by innovation, working with some of the worlds best technolgists. They will provide what you want and need to be innovative.
Cons
"Not everyone can be successful" they say. Anyone at mastercard has heard this excuse time and time and time again. To be "successful" or above, you have to stab your trusted co-workers in the back and constantly try to one-up the next guy, even if they too are trying to be successful. Favoratism rules - not quality of work. Are you a close friend of a Sr. business leader?...cool. You get ALL the rewards regardless of work output or ideas, or efforts! No worries. Do you have creative and innovative ideas...awesome! Just don't expect to get any credit or a raise or bonus for them because your manager will claim that for himself. You simply can not get ahead without hurting someone else. Its a poor "statistics" based review policy and is so DE-motivating to me over the years that I had to leave. No matter how hard I tried, pushed the envelope, or got involved, follwed the promoted processes, did everything and everything I could think of... i couldnt get ahead. Lastly - TOO many overseas contactors! Don't get me wrong, some of these guys are awesome -- but many (or MOST rather) can't hold their own to save their life, and when they do aquire a skill, they quit and go somewhere else. Complete waste of everyones time and company money. FTE's spend a lot of time covering for their mistakes and fixing what these "Teflon coated contractors" create. Not that we get any credit for it, but FTE's tend to do the work of 4 brain-dead, timeclock driven contractors. FTE's are results driven and most contractors only care about billable hours. Which would you rather have creating your next great product??
