1. Management lacks original thinking and often seems focused on copying whatever competitors are doing rather than understanding customer problems and building a long-term vision. This impacts decisions across multiple teams.
2. Favoritism plays a huge role in career growth. I saw people with strong performance struggle while others received opportunities simply because they had good relationships with senior employees. If you are not part of the inner circle, expect a very different experience.
3. Knowledge hoarding is a serious issue. Many employees keep critical information to themselves because it makes them harder to replace. Documentation is often incomplete, and new joiners are left figuring things out on their own.
4. The culture can be surprisingly toxic. Instead of collaboration, there is a lot of blame shifting, politics, and self-preservation. People are often more concerned about protecting themselves than solving problems.
5. Once you resign, expect people to treat you differently. In my experience, colleagues who were friendly for months suddenly became distant during the notice period.
6. Being fully remote has exposed another problem: some employees have become experts at appearing busy rather than being productive. Unfortunately, visibility often matters more than actual output.
7. Work-life balance is not great. Last-minute requests, changing priorities, and unnecessary urgency are common. There is a lot of pressure to always be available.
8. Now, let's address elephant in the room: The company has a hire-fast, fire-fast mentality. Over the course of roughly a year, 50-60 employees were let go through layoffs, performance plans, or other restructuring exercises. Whether the problem is hiring quality or workforce planning, employees end up paying the price.
9. Job security feels weak. Even people who believed they were performing well often worried about being placed on a PIP or impacted by organizational changes.
10. Internal communication is poor. Important decisions are often made without enough context being shared, leaving employees to deal with the consequences later.
11. There are employees who have been with the company for years and have accumulated significant influence. Challenging their opinions, even when they are wrong, can be risky.
12. The company appears profitable from the outside, but internally there is constant pressure around budgets, costs, and headcount. Many decisions feel driven by balance sheet considerations.
13. Promotions and recognition do not always feel merit-based. Visibility and relationships often seem to carry more weight than actual impact.
Teams are frequently stretched thin because responsibilities keep increasing while resources do not always keep pace.
14. For people in Sales, Marketing, and some customer-facing roles, the niche nature of the GRC/compliance space can make job searches more challenging after leaving. Many recruiters outside the industry do not immediately understand the relevance of the experience.
15. Employee feedback is collected regularly, but it often feels like the same issues continue to exist year after year without meaningful improvement.
16. The gap between how the company presents itself externally and how things operate internally is larger than I expected when I joined. Most people here are shallow, or became shallow over the years working here.
