You will soon learn that all of the nice stuff is for customers on-site, and you when you were interviewing. Now that you are part of the machine, you are nothing. Your talent and effort is extracted, you do work to a quality and quantity commanding a $300k salary for under 6 figures, and when you burn out you are replaced. During a staff meeting we were once asked if we'd prefer to keep a sabbatical every 5 years or instead have an extra week of vacation per year. The vote was to keep the sabbatical. I now see why they'd love that: very few people make it to the requisite 5 years.
It all soon begins to feel fake and hollow.
"You choose your hours just get your work done," turns into "45 minimum," turns into "I know it'll take 60 hour weeks to meet these expectations but you can always just be fired if you don't like it," and some people are doing 90 hour weeks. You will never, EVER be compensated appropriately for the work you put in. Being paid above average to do mind-boggling amounts of work is not a fair trade, and you could at times make just as much per hour of your time working at McDonald's flipping burgers, ironically probably with a lower blood pressure.
Uptime is second to upgrades and changes. This causes problems.
Whatever demand the customer has, no matter how absurd, you're gonna make it happen and suffer for it in most cases.
No time to socialize or enjoy the campus, food, or the company of your coworkers.
I should have walked as soon as I heard "Work-life integration," out of the CEO's mouth.
