- Terrible lack of emotional intelligence shown by all partners, it's obvious they care more about the bottom line than people. Despite the fact that they would vehemently argue the contrary. They will do very little to retain people in favor of simply replacing them.
- If you have a problem, it's your problem. Do not mistakenly think that your candor will be well received. Any criticism will come back to bite you.
- No room for error. I was at a time putting together 5-6 page agendas for a weekly status meeting. These would be nitpicked for punctuation, grammar, putting things in a specific order.....while the content and structure of the insanely long agenda is somehow irrelevant. I have never in my career as a IT professional, seen or been asked to put together 5-6 page agendas. It's absurd.
- It's a cult. Upper management seems to think they have all the answers to everything and should not be challenged. (despite the fact that most of them have never worked anywhere else). Fall in line or get out. Choke down that Kool-Aid.
- Committing to projects just to get the paycheck without, it seems, considering if they even have the resources. Worked on multiple projects as a PM where there were literally no developers available. Resource Management was a joke and was told by my supervisor to lie to the clients about who was working on what. Then told it was my fault that I didn't understand the technical ins and outs of the work. I couldn't help but wonder why that was my job as a PM to understand the technical side and how that would not have been an issue if there had actually been a developer committed to the project.
- Partners, at least when I was there, were reducing the amount of deliverable work they personally do. That's right PARTNERS were producing documents, and writing code!! One might argue this is because they can't manage their resources but honestly I think it's more about power and control. Partners are still doing that much work because they don't trust the people they hire to do it correctly and are too lazy to train them. So if you have the misfortune of working on a project with a partner, don't think you'll actually have autonomy. You will need to hone your mind-reading skills and try to guess what they want to see.
- One of the biggest groups of insincere people I have EVER seen. You will be overwhelmed by half-hearted gestures, overly-enthusiastic hellos, and affected small talk. My guess is this is a by-product of the fact that any dissent is stamped out immediately. Tell the truth or actually speak candidly and you'll get put on a PIP in no time.
- Speaking of PIPs. Because of their lack of understanding that happy employees produce better work, any problematic employees get put on the chopping block. They will use a PIP to justify the termination they have already decided for you. Putting you, an overworked and frustrated employee, through an impossible game of jumping through hoops in order to retain employment. You are replaceable. They do not care. I witnessed numerous talented individuals get pushed out because management did not understand how to leverage their strengths.
- Ridiculously low compensation. It's quite baffling why most of the staff doesn't simply go across the street to Nationwide and get paid 20% more for a reasonable workload.
- Speaking of workload. You will work for a group of people who seem to have little to NO identity outside of this company. Therefore you will be expected to make this company YOUR LIFE. That means when you get assigned 9 projects as one PM and can't keep all the plates spinning it's just that you don't care enough. Have an issue with that? Well you will get multiple faux apologies for this by management...but nothing will change. As if management has no power to impact your workload. They preach accountability but don't be fooled. Only you are expected to be accountable. However when your manager completely screws up your workload they will not take ANY responsibility for this. In fact my manager, in the same breath, apologized for my insane workload and then warned me that it would happen again.
- Company politics. When I was there, one of the members of upper management was newly engaged to one of the partners. She had direct reports. I can't begin to explain how inappropriate this is on multiple levels. How could any of her direct reports be honest and talk to her safely about their concerns about the company? No one seemed to care.
- The companies "success" seems overblown. It feels more like they make profits by withholding profit sharing, paying their employees next to nothing and overworking them.
- Non-existent training.
- Practically zero advancement opportunities. You will have to wait until someone that has been there for 10 years gets a promo before you even have a chance.
- Unlimited PTO - good luck taking a day off when you are working 60 hours a week and expected to take/respond to calls after hours on weekends, basically whenever. Don't be fooled, this is in place primarily so they don't have to pay out your PTO when they fire you.
