A place where mediocre and crappy engineers go to die.
Pros
As one person best puts it, it's one of the few places were you "clock in late and clock out early". The work environment tends to be on the flexible side in terms of time. To further compensate for the low pay, CBS has a lot of free food and free beer events. The catering is typically really great.
Cons
The best engineers have left a long time ago. Any good engineers tend not to stay. It's very hard to keep anyone when compensation is horrible. This a common joke and complaint at engineering. Consequently there is a continual tech brain drain. The people aren't great and culture is horrible. There is a lot of politics even at the lower levels. All people seem to care about is getting promoted based on tenure and not on skill or merit. I'm guessing this is because they want higher pay. If they were smart, they would figure out that the best way to get a pay raise is by going elsewhere. Upper management is retarded. What makes it worse is that they are mostly based in New York. SF really has no say in anything, which makes sense given the next item. The long term plan is to phase out the SF office in favor of lower cost areas like Oregon and Kentucky. It's a lot like a higher form of McDonalds or fast food restaurant. It's a decent place to start your career if you're from a lower tier school since the CBS brand is very well known. However due to compensation it's a revolving door with a lot of people both coming in and leaving.
