Pros
A few decent individuals you may be lucky enough to work with, sadly far too few of them around if they haven't already walked out that door. Want to sample inefficiency in business? - this is THE place to be. Starting your working life? This is a place you'll gain quite a few cuts and bruises as an employee and a good place to learn a few meaningless management catchphrases.
Cons
Not a respected or a prestigious brand. More fitting descriptors are: opaque, lackluster, unethical, incohesive, bean-counting, uninspiring, rinse and repeat. UK workforce largely constituted of early work-life individuals (with its accompanying lower pay scale), managed by the opposing side of the spectrum who are so out of touch with what is possible in the digital realm today and instead concentrate on their lovely bonuses. If you are thinking of joining the company, be prepared to regularly work over and above your contractual hours or you may end up being made to feel your role in the company is under jeopardy. An overemphasis of >85% utilisation - often results in unhealthy work-life balance and is Atos management's weapon to obliterate your concerns about your future career direction and for you to bow your head humbly and to be grateful for the scraps you receive. Pay reviews? Good luck with that, get accustomed to the phrase 'it's in the pipeline.' Appraisals, a predetermined decision aimed at undermining your confidence and perceived value to the company. Cheapness runs throughout the company. Disjointed internal processes, outsourced HR is the epitome of an amateurish, clumsy and inefficient approach to providing core internal business support. Retrieving information that you are referred towards is a dismal experience - countless outdated documents, poor versioning control, or too little detail to make it a useful reference. An acknowledged problem yet still nothing has been done to rectify it in 4 years. Yet managers refer to this 'wonderful' document and knowledge portal as your centre for all things knowledge and information related. Ask a manager for a pointer and you'll be accused of not putting in the background work and back to the portal you are directed plus a mark against your name to be used against you when they see best fit. Very poor staff support - untimely or absent training/development and a general failure to promote internal staff. They'd rather contract out to external consultants than address the ailment. Profits that could have been shared amongst employees to help with job satisfaction & motivation ends up in the pockets of those with no allegiance to the company. The net result is that employees end up caught within a losing battle and the door to having more demands made of its employees is opened ever wider. Not an investors in people organisation, it's all about showing them the money. Cronyism is rife. A lot of questionable ethics in play by those wanting to become patrons of the mgmt club. Job title inflation, many examples witnessed of senior consultants claiming they are at the top of their game - you later discover their work isn't an original creation and aren't able to think for themselves - yet these individuals seemingly succeed because they can fly under the radar. Very short term approach to one's career and the management LOVE it. (First rule about mgmt club - do not talk about the mgmt club. 2nd rule about mgmt club - you do not talk about the mgmt club.) Disengaged managers who apply an 'obey don't question' culture. No promotion of alternative creative thinking, 'do it as the document describes' or 'refer to the template I sent you' - provides them with indispensability. Be prepared to be heavily criticised and used as the scapegoat when the result doesn't quite resonate with the client in the way they'd hoped for. A bargain bucket way of conducting business. Not a great atmosphere to work within, unless you enjoy tormenting yourself rummaging for a few crumbs. Gaining knowledge and advancing your career is extremely difficult at Atos, until you either give in and sell your soul or realise there are better employers out there. Without the public sector, Atos UK doesn't have much presence in the marketplace in Blighty. But the guys at the top have managed to convince these tax-payer funded projects that Atos represents good value for money as part of their bid outline (which quickly expands to other non-budgeted works which the client didn't specifically know to define but necessary to reach the desired outcome). The reality is a cheap headline price that then gets Atos access to the public sector golden cheque book... until that day arrives where the client is forced to justify the budget overspend or delivery overrun. (Anyone read about how the DWP contract went? Interesting to watch the Atos representatives squirm within the government committee sessions.) Atos tried to gain traction within other more competitive sectors, but failed because those clients know what they want so Atos is only utilised for minor projects. The real out of the box transformation projects are left for the real IT sector professionals. Quite telling is how Atos' UK headquarters is set to be downsized in 2017.