Pros
After working here for 8 years, with ownership by several equity companies and two CEOs, I definitely feel like this company is looking ahead. There have been strides toward internal transparency and expanding the portfolio to ensure future success. The CEO is quite frank about what he expects from us, and what we should expect from him and his management team. I feel much more engaged with senior management under this regime. There are opportunities in many different enterprise-level technologies, although those may not always be available to everyone... once you're entrenched on a team it can take quite a while before changes can happen. However, the flexibility overall is improving and while Applied continues to expand into new lateral fields in the insurance industry, the number of opportunities to be involved in something new is always increasing.
Cons
Compensation is really on the low side. When I received my first job offer it was 20% lower than my current salary. I quickly declined that offer but they countered with a more reasonable offer - still I got the feeling that low-balling salaries unless you pushed back was the M.O. (at least under the previous owner/management). Things seem to have improved since then but that's mostly hearsay. Vacation is also on the light side. You only get 2 weeks until you've been here for 5 years, then you go to 3 weeks. I was getting 25 days off at my previous job (6-year tenure) so that was a difficult adjustment. You can only roll over 1 week so it's difficult to build up a decent amount of time off for an extended trip.