Pros
Although I work in field sales, I have the utmost respect and admiration for the developers in Providence. Nonlinear continuum mechanics is a difficult field to start with of which maybe 5% of the population can understand. Within this field, I am convinced we have the brightest and best people in the world. I feel confident representing Abaqus to the customers because I know the talent and quality of the developers behind it. It is our talented development staff that made Abaqus the well respected product it is today. It is a pleasure to be able to represent the hard work of R&D to the rest of the world. Relative to sales at other companies, the compensation and benefits are low. Within our narrow industry, they are probably average.
Kontras
Although I have much praise for R&D, very little of it seems to filter through operations over to R&D. It is a shame that these guys don't feel like they are getting the recognition they deserve. Communication across divisions should be better than it is, but it seems that internal communication is discouraged to promote cost savings efforts. With the acquisition of SIMULIA by DS, there are many annoying hoops that we need to jump through - spreadsheets, affidavits, etc. etc. It seems that the activity of management is getting replaced more and more by "policy". Policy is what you do when you don't want to make individual management decisions. People are individuals, and one blanket policy doesn't fit all situations. (Eg Travel Policy).