Prós
First of all, the pay is high. Very high. For a good reason (see the cons). The NY Office is impressive. Big, white and bright. An art gallery full of impressive contemporary and outsider works that are sure to impress any client or friend you bring into the office. The coffee bar is lovely, as is the free drinks and food on Thursdays. It is a safe, clean place to work. They take sexual harassment and intolerable behavior seriously and root it out from the inside. And the holiday parties are quite fun. There are quite a few smart people that work here, if you can find them.
Contras
As stated in the title, this is the most cut-throat, poisonous place I've ever had the displeasure of working at. Highly political. Everyone throws everyone under the bus, all while pretending to be cheerful out of fear of suffering the same fate. I have to believe there are good people who work here. But I think this place turns most of them, like a full moon to a werewolf. Fangs bared. Vicious. Brutal. Management bullies their employees here. More times than I can count I've stumbled upon people crying in the bathroom. Kindness is a weapon. You can trust no one, not HR nor resource management. There is no work life balance. I've worked more than more my fair share of 90 hour weeks, on holidays and weekends, and was not granted the ability to leave when a family member died. The agency cares more about winning awards than actually investing the time and effort into solving the client problems needed to create a foundation for winning those awards. I repeat, this agency does not care about what the client wants or is paying for. It creates a very stressful swirl where employees are never able to meet client demands and management's demands at the same time. You are expected to have no life outside of work. Any hobbies are frowned upon. Any interests or passions are seen as roadblocks they do not further the bottom line of RGA. If you are a well rounded person, it will come up in your review and you will be scolded for it. There are only two types of people who excel here. Bullies. And Brown-nosers. All the creative leadership is leaving in drones and you can see it reflected in the work, lack of leadership and the toxic environment. Everyone is desperately searching for an RGA idea, but no one can articulate what that is because vision is lacking and foresight doubly so. The many intelligent people you get lucky enough to work with are often overshadowed by the overly inflated egos that parade around the office, sipping kool-aid lattes, talking about how excited they are about their own ideas. Management pits the younger ones against each other, promising promotions that never come. Layoffs are frequent. Your work will be stolen. You will be thrown under the bus. You will get sick from stress. You will be punished for it. You will hate your life. And yet, you will be forced to smile through it all.