Pros
Very strong leadership Quick project turnaround, usually between 6 to 9 months Easy to relate your own work contribution to end product, which could be satisfying
Cons
Bug fix requests frequently get labeled with "will not fix" or "fix in next chip/architecture" because there simply is not enough time or human resources to clean up design. There is simply too much fire-fighting here. Hardware is not designed very cleanly because of this. Some engineers may get frustrated by having to debug a debug feature. Some projects end up looking like a huge stack of bandages because of poor planning, discipline and execution. Very poor documentation, and lack of redundancy - one could also look at this as efficiency and leanness, but this could be problematic when key engineers jump the boat.