The pay is well below market rate for a given profession even though ICF claims to regularly benchmark salaries. You get such little PTO that if you take a couple days off every few months or get sick, you burn through it. People are underpaid, overworked, and get no real breaks, so most people leave within a couple years Health insurance is expensive and not that great. The work environment can get toxic and there's nothing you can really do about it. Gaslighting and passive aggressive communication is normal. Unclear and changing expectations are a given. The work gets boring and repetitive. Projects can go on for years, and you can get stuck working on them that long, which deprives you of the satisfaction of achieving regular milestones. Maybe it depends on your manager, but in my experience the only way to get new, interesting, or different work is to make your own connections (hard to do when you're stuck working on the same projects with the same people for years) and offer your help. Project management is an issue from the top down. Senior leadership pushes to get more work, teams are understaffed, and many project managers are seriously lacking in project and client management skills. If you gently suggest trying something new or different in regard to project or client management, bad project managers take it personally and get defensive. But if you're not coming up with ideas to improve the team you're not taking enough initiative. This is really a place to bide your time and try to get a decent title until you can find a better job at a better company.
