Pros
The company offers a pretty good benefits package as far as health insurance and the retirement plan - they match up to 4% of employee contributions. Other branches are more staid and conservative, the but the Simsbury office offers some nice perks that make it a decent place to work - a casual environment, occasional on-site parties and luncheons, an annual picnic, early dismissal on holiday weekends and a business casual dress code with jeans day on Friday. There is also an onsite, state-of-the-art gym that is free (!) to employees. I am not micro-managed, but this may vary depending on your supervisor. There has been an increase in schedule flexibility - working from home, 4 10-hour days and part time positions - recently.
Cons
Some middle managers are not suited for their jobs - poor people skills, lack of knowledge - but seem to hold managerial positions simply because they have been at the company for a long time. The overall salaries are low compared to other companies. The workload is crazy and one needs to be able to compartmentalize and leave some things undone in order to not be overworked. There are some people who stay late or come in on weekends to try to keep up even though their salaries don't warrant this kind of dedication. The company is very behind technically. If not for a merger in 1999 with a company that had a good, up-to-date computer system (Executive Risk), I shudder to think what we would have to put up with, but there is still a need for much improvement. The company intranet is terrible to navigate - don't expect the search button to help you find what you're looking for. Whenever you find something you'll need again, be sure to add it to your favorites because you may never find it again otherwise. And please, let's update the browser already. We're still using an about to be discontinued version of Internet Explorer. Although the company does offer a "work from home" option, remote computing is so slow as to make it a case for only when absolutely necessary (weather or injury). Tech support has declined since it was outsourced a few years ago. Calling in technical problems used to be a quick process: your name, you user id, the problem you were having and that would be all. Now when you call, you have to answer a myriad of questions and be kept on the line for a long time. They even try to get you to get up and ask around to see if you coworkers are having the same problems - unacceptable! Now I only call tech support if absolutely necessary. It's easier to just reboot; that's usually what their advice ends up being anyway.