After 5 years I've found it to be so-so.
Pros
Most people are friendly Mainers who make great teammates. I like the community / team play aspect of working at L.LBean. The workplace politics are definitely there, like everywhere, but are a lot less in your face than at other employers. Interpersonal relationships are held at a high premium at L.L.Bean. About half dozen of my (soon to be former) co-workers will undoubtedly be lifelong friends. The Bean's Best program is a great idea.
Cons
In general, I enjoyed working at L.L.Bean. For an IS job, which can be extremely stressful at times, I found the level of stress at L.L.Bean to be a lot less, and people to be easier to deal with on the whole. I soured on the job after 3 years, due to the insulting process of attempting to move ahead in the company. L.L.Bean isn't the place for you if you have great technical skills and motivated towards career development. For technical jobs, your peers have a highly mixed level of experience, and across the IS department the lack of deep technical skills means that lots of people lean on people with better technical skills. Ironically, actual job achievement does not seem to be rewarded. Once in 5 years I received anything other than a standard 2% raise, and I found I was more capable/driven than the vast majority of my peers in IS. At previous employers this would have meant better overall compensation each year, but at L.L.Bean it meant exactly nothing at all. Advancement at L.L.Bean is nebulous and doesn't seem to be based on one's actual work experience or ability to get the job done. This is where politics became really apparent to me. I literally saw several terrible people get promoted, and was absolutely stunned; I get the part about interpersonal relationships and all, but there's a point where cronyism undermines the integrity that the company holds so dear. L.L.Bean has been doing some variant of employing people for over 100 years, and while I respect its longevity and treatment of the customer overall, I also can't help but to address its inflexibility. When you hear the company crowing about retaining talent, but then it won't meet talented people even half way when it comes to negotiating compensation or career development, you come to the conclusion that the company is a wolf after all. When I decided it was time to move on, there was a clear distinction between the flexibility offered by "new school" companies, and the antiquated/conservative nature of what L.L.Bean was doing.
