Avantages
Business Objects was a medium sized tech firm. It was a great place to work if you wanted to experience Big Company life without having to take a position at a large company. This was a great place to implement ideas, if you were willing to follow through on them yourself. Even our interns were developing features in our products (perhaps 10% of the engineering staff were interns, most of whom were working on shippable features). Really good salary for new grads. The Vancouver office is very well located. (From what I can tell, most of their big offices have great locations). People are very friendly and easy to get along with.
Inconvénients
There's not a lot of community recognition. If you drop the name at a party, you'll almost always get blank stares. This is even more true now that they have been purchased by SAP -- the brand recognition in the tech community of either Business Objects or SAP is unfortunately low. The salary, at least in Vancouver, is really high for new graduates, and really low for people with some experience. It was very common for someone to start working at BOBJ right out of school and make 10k more than their peers at other companies. However, in three years, they would be make 20-40k less than the same people elsewhere. The product is made for the business sector, this may not be interesting for many purely technical people. There are very, very few perks for working for this employer. You come to the office, you do some work, you go home and get a cheque in the mail. They do offer bike storage, a gym and a foosball table, but that's about it. Over time, the office has lost more and more benefits. Stock options are gone, stock purchase plans are gone, health benefits are getting worse every year, retirement benefits get worse every year, bonus payout formulas are constantly readjusted to lower the payout (or so it seems), company bar-b-q's are being cancelled, etc. All of the good reasons for working here are systematically being removed, and there is no replacement. There is very little company loyalty amongst employees. In the development side of the business there is a huge stigma associated with being a Software Developer. There are basically two kinds of people: Developers, and everyone else (QA, translation staff, IT, PgM, Tech Writers, etc.). If you weren't a developer, you were looked down upon -- this was especially noticeable during bonus time or salary review time.