Pros
Excellent location. Modern office space (although disruption during recent refurbishment). Subsidised canteen. Good work/life balance with little pressure as workload is either not substantial or not scrutinized. Established reputation for providing high-quality scientific research.
Cons
As others have mentioned, the merger between Springer and Nature\Macmillan has felt more like a takeover with the Springer way dominant. Settling down a bit now in my view. The flip side of the above pro is that people can coast because their work is not scrutinized. It seems this is hard to do in Germany because of Workers’ Council, but it stretches across the whole organisation. Demoralising if you see others not pulling their weight and not being called to account. Systems are at least 10 years behind the times and there seems little willingness to make the substantial investments needed to bring them up to date quickly (hope to be proved wrong). Everything takes much longer than it should to implement – system development, process change, staff recruitment, etc. Complacent and not customer focussed. Decisions are made with little or no consideration for the impact on the customer because of the strong reputation of the products.
