Pros
It’s a good place to work if you are in the early stage of your career and have few or no aspirations to advance yourself within a reasonable amount of time. The salary is average or slightly below average.
Cons
No real advancement. “Promotions” are actually lateral changes with a more impressive sounding title, more responsibility, but usually no significant or commensurate increase in salary to go along with it. Top management roles usually go to French nationals, or to people recruited from outside of the company. French management team are dishonest, and promises made are rarely if ever kept (agree with the other Sr. Mgr. review totally). Local Senior management goes through the motions of “succession planning” but rarely if ever does a successor actually advance when someone leaves. Competent and motivated senior managers are stuck in their jobs, as the top division president or country-CEO roles are reserved either for French nationals or those politically connected to the French management team. “The Peter Principle” is in effect here, where the most talented, most skilled, and most ambitious middle-managers are kept subordinated in their roles in order to make their less-competent “superiors” look good. The top management ranks are full of self-important egomaniacs who think they know more than they actually do, who never take any business risks, who claim credit for the successes of their subordinates; while blaming any failures on those same subordinates. I would recommend working here only to a fresh college graduate as a place to gain a few years of experience as a “stepping stone,” or to someone who has no ambition to advance their professional career. The current US-division CEO is an arrogant, condescending, self-important, big-mouth, who believes he is far more knowledgeable than he actually is. He is someone I would never consider hiring to run even a small company – a fast food restaurant maybe – but certainly not a large multiple-site manufacturing business. My former employer - a very well known huge multinational industrial company - would never tolerate the openly abrasive and offensive behavior of this division CEO and would fire him for his abusive behavior. If you are currently in middle or senior management at another company, I would not recommend leaving to take a position here. They will make it sound like a step up from where you are, but soon after you join, they will change the game and you will find you have taken a step backward, instead of forward.