I hope you like meetings, because if you land a job here, you are going to have anywhere from 5 to 6 meetings per week (worker bees), upwards of 10 to 15 (or more) for leads. For management - all you will do is have meetings. You will become a professional meeting attendee/planner. High level management (at least on the particular program I work on) seem to be clueless with regard to how things really work in the "trenches". The only thing they seem to be concerned with is staying within the budget, no matter what, and committing to absolutely unreasonable deadlines - I suppose this is how it goes at most jobs though. Expect to work mandatory overtime, if you are in danger of missing a deadline. Although overtime is paid (straight time), the first 5 hours over a salaried 40 hour work week is "free" (you don't get paid for the first 5 hours of overtime, even though I have been lead to understand that the customer is billed for these 5 hours). The process, red tape, documentation etc, required to implement just one line of code is preposterous. Several of the tools and hardware that the developers are forced to use are archaic, slow, and nearly useless in some cases, and serve as nothing more than productivity killers and add to the frustration levels of the developers. It seems as if management absolutely refuses to listen to (or even attempt to implement) suggestions that the worker bees make - which would likely solve at least some of the problems the project is currently experiencing. System Engineers have WAY to much power over the Software Developers - whatever they say goes, regardless of what a group of very experienced developers have to say about it.
