Pros
nothing - but you'll get work experience if that's all you're after
Cons
Managers are essentially salesmen - they care about nothing else than guaranteeing they'll keep the client. They will work you to the ground. Often rude and downright abusive, they have no real expertise in anything other than selling last years' (read: last decade's) tech solutions to clients that can't tell a computer from a TV remote. Managers on IT projects also act as PMs (Project Managers) and often have never had real IT development experience. You can see how well that can work out: they usually have no idea how to prioritise staff, tasks or solutions. Their idea of PM is just sticking to deadlines agreed in advance with the client: when the client fails to deliver on the obligations on their side, somehow this never affects deadlines. Nor do other impediments - they've never even heard the word, and they run IT projects. They will always hide technical risks from the client and pretend they're not there or that everything is always going fine. Supposedly, the client is expecting experts to deliver their projects but often teams are just novices, straight out of university, that have never worked in IT professionally and haven't got the faintest idea of how to carry out an IT project. Of course, the quality of the solutions is often abysmal but who cares? There's never any internal reviewing and the clients don't have the time, don't know any better or simply don't care either. You cannot expect any serious training from anyone - bar exceptions - though they do offer online training subscriptions, which are handy, if you ever manage to find the time at the end of a 10 hour workday. They will use coercive tactics and psychological pressure to make you work overtime but will almost never pay you for it. They will try to avoid at all costs to pay you overtime or week ends. Project delivery always trumps holidays so you can expect to take time off only when it suits them e.g. in between projects. They have a system to log your project hours by which your progress is monitored - only that you can only enter the number of hours you managers tell you to, often in unrelated project codes. Often they'll ask you to enter fewer hours than you have actually worked. Oh, and if you're not on a project, you enter zero hours so your progression is of course hampered. This happens more often than you'd think. They insist on working on client site just to maintain a constant presence at their client's premises since the client does not know any better and will assume that since you're there, you're delivering. This is the good case. The bad case is the client will want to meddle and have various opinions on IT matters even when they've hired you as the expert (supposedly). Often, the client site is simply appalling: noisy, dirty, you'll work in run down buildings that haven't been renovated in 20 odd years with ancient hardware (15 inch monitor anyone? PCs with windows XP? in the 21st century? yes, really). Some clients have not enforced the anti-smoking laws: you'll often see people smoking on the premises - including your managers! IT work is often on legacy systems: you'll learn nothing of substance if stuck in one of those projects! Performance appraisals take place in an non transparent way: you'll find out your appraisal but there's no way to get your point of view across. Your supervisors' appraisal is never disputed and higher management doesn't know any better nor do they care to know any better. Don't count on your colleagues to support you or help you: they're often after the same promotion and they'll do their best to undermine you and promote their interests at your expense! They will hide information from you that you need to carry out the project, they will meet the client behind your back without telling you, they will blame you for anything that goes wrong to your superiors at every opportunity. It's a poisonous environment to work in.