Many managers are not qualified for their job. That's why so many employees are shuffled around among the managers. They don't know how to be a good manager, so they hang on to their 'empire' and can give you completely opposite evaluations within one week just because it fits their political needs. They also don't know how to train new hires. They let senior employees that nobody wants to work with micromanage the newbies with poor planning and sometimes melodramas, even though they clearly know that. It's all about politics.
Work load is stressful. Projects are often in a bad shape, so people are over stressed towards the end, especially the CRAs. The attitude is very poor between different departments - balls often get kicked around, liability/bottom line/finger pointing is more important than getting the project done, and the general line is 'other departments and branches don't do their job so we have to clean things up'.
The company culture is all about business needs. They won't even try to hide it. You, as a robot, don't matter. It's about their money. Various career paths are poorly designed as their experimental tools. These programs are not fair, and don't select the best candidates. However, because these fit their business needs, they won't even bother to pretend they care about their employees.
