- No process.
- Any attempts at developing one are squashed by upper management. (Since previous employees did things this way, we must continue doing it. We don’t know any other way, and we don’t want to hear how it’s done elsewhere.)
- Everything is on fire all the time. No matter what is said in a status meeting, or what work you had on your plate in the morning, by 5 pm there will be some super-hot emergency job that needs to happen ASAP.
- Nine times out of ten, that emergency will have been caused by the downstream effects of there being no process. The other 1 time, it’s because no one sets realistic expectations with clients.
- Being expected to work long nights and most weekends. Being seen as uncooperative for telling upper management that you can’t put in those hours.
- Looking forward to being able to see your spouse and children over the winter “break,” only to be told that there is still an epic workload that needs to be managed.
- Being told to be billable 40 hours a week (but not being able to bill non-billable time for meetings or downtime, and often not being able to bill to over budget jobs).
- Being told to make up PTO time. (That’s right. If you’re taking a week off next month, you need to work 40 extra hours before you go.)
- Receiving the twice-monthly HR email telling you another coworker is gone with no notice. (I’m not sure what all the secrecy is about with these emails, either. We’re all pretty close, and we find out the real story very quickly.)
- The retreats, where they bring everyone to Lexington and pretends none of the above is happening and tell us how great the company is doing. The good news is that you won’t have to hear much of this, because you’ll be in the hallway of the conference room half the time trying to meet deadlines that haven’t been adjusted to allow for the retreat.
- Being reprimanded for your negativity when you attempt to address any of this with upper management.
- Being given no tools to succeed, and then everyone being surprised when things fail.
