Knowledge and skills hardly count...
Pros
Good salary. Technical expertise (in a select few). Good learning for fresh out of school engineers (if you are lucky to work with the few knowledgeable and skilled supervisors).
Cons
Most of the supervisors who have made it in the company have did it based on how much they could suck up to their supervisors. Your skills, knowledge and even the passion for engineering would be doused in a few years, as you have to learn the even more important skill of sucking up. Some of the engineers would make obvious and terrible mistakes in calculation but get away with it, and are hardly held accountable. The accountability rests with the person working on a particular task, even if that person has just taken over the task from someone else. Your career progress will depend on how much show you put on regarding the work you did, instead of the actual work you did. The GROW program, although good on paper, plays against the core concept of equality in work place, and is just a symbol of token women empowerment. Women still suffer subtle sexist remarks every now and then.
