If you're an independent worker and can manage time to maintain your network then TI is the place for you!
Pros
TI can provide an individual with plenty of career development opportunities. One of the best practices of TI management is in their support of employees moving to different jobs and taking on new directions. In most companies I've worked with management frowned on any ambitious career movement and many times it was held against you if your plans were discovered. At TI, this is viewed as diversification of knoweldge and generally supported. The working environment is fairly autonomous for most all the professional positions within the company. If you feel you need to investigate a particular area such as a new software tool or spend some time studying a new aspect of the project you are working on then you just do it. Schedule management is significantly up to the individual, at least as long as you can keep it from slipping. Benefits are comparable to that of most large companies. For the last several years there has been a significant push for healthy living and work/life balance. I know that underlying this is some study espousing the economic upside of happy healthy employees on the medical benefits balance sheet and also with regards to productivity but I'm fine with that because TI is stepping up in this regard. Overall employee moral is fairly decent. There is of course the usual griping about all manner of stuff but overall, if you're the kind who likes to set their own day to day schedule, TI is probably your kind of workplace. I feel the senior leadership has done a pretty good job in managing responses to a changing market. Although TI has consistantly fell short of expectation this year, the delta is right at the margins. All this combined with the fear that Nokia is looking to multi source its inventory has hit hard on stocks but TI has shown it is flexible and can react quickly to recover from less than stellar years. All in all, I feel I am treated fairly and my opinion is respected. Most of the people in TI are dedicated and intelligent and if you take the time to network a bit you can find ample resources to support your goals.
Cons
TI is such an open company that it can be difficult to generate momentum for some ideas. You really have to be willing to be a politician as well if you really want an idea to flourish because you must convince enough people that it would be worth persuing. This can eat up quite a bit of time and if you're not careful, you can find yourself short of time for the work that is currently on your plate. You have to be vigilent in managing your time as well as your goals. Another problem is that there are too many sales people that have not really worked in a product team and had to completely see a product through to completion. They are always expecting something to take a couple of hours or a day at most but the reality is it is usually a couple of weeks at least and then they do not respect that you have to weave their project into an already crowed schedule. Too late though, they've already promised the customer and you're on the hook. Sales drives most upper management and if a sales team really wants something they can usually push their priority down your throat if they want to. I understand that the bottom line is revenue but sometimes I feel like quality is sacrificed too much and we end up with an upset client rather than one we should have been honest with initially and simply told them we don't have the time. I'm sure someone will post a comment telling me I'm nieve in this respect but this is my opinion, not theirs. I blame upper management for this to a certain extent because it seems that a majority of it has risen through the sales force rather than through engineering.