Management is high-handed, and sometimes seems genuinely resentful that they have to put up with such a pack of lousy employees. Little perks of the job, such as hard nameplates and a monthly company-provided breakfast, have been disappearing as cost-saving measures lately, replaced only by lectures on how we should be grateful we ever got them at all. Spending on corporate art continues apace (file under positives if you really like corporate art.) Top management comes from a programming background, and has been struggling mightily with the massive expansion of the company - bureaucracy and top-down micromanagement has exploded over the past few years. Lower-level promotion is not well explained, and seems largely to be based on technical skill, which has created a lower management structure with staggeringly variable leadership quality. Hours can be brutal, depending on your role and project. Don't let anybody tell you you'll be regularly working 80 hours a week (the claim has been made and is absurd), but I did do an 86 hour week once, and was averaging 55 for a while. From the moment basic training ends (and sometimes before), it's sink or swim. Positions of extreme responsibility are regularly given to people fresh in the door, and guidance can be limited or nonexistent. This is an opportunity to some degree, but also leads to a significant 1-year washout rate (and, frankly, some important work done poorly because it's given to people who can't learn it fast enough OTJ.) I've got several friends who found themselves in need of new prescriptions for acid reflux and anti-anxiety meds before they showed themselves the door. Average "life expectancy" at the company in customer-facing roles is 18 months.
