Pros
Since this was a fairly new department, it consisted of mostly young professionals so the ages were very close together. Very well educated people professionally and academically who helped build a brand new department through hard work and ideas. Able to develop procedures and policies that were implemented department wide. There was excitement because the future seemed limitless. Nothing like seeing something you helped work on be used by other. Benefits were top notch as well as sick/vacation days. Pay was also above average I would say. Lot of deadlines and multi-tasking but that's what made the work interesting.
Cons
The executive management motives were apparently not to grow the business, but to trim as much expenses as possible. All numbers and no sense. They stopped promotions and hiring and eventually opened "sister" sites in TX and India to help with work that we were already completing on time. No respect, the day after the last trainer from India returned, we were notified that we were being phased out. So three month training for the folks in India was good for the business but not the 3-5 years that the people in CA had put in.