- toxic management + the culture of constant feedback and performance reviews will make you feel like you are never good enough, no matter how hard you try. Management will set expectations and make promises, but when you meet the agreed upon goals and expectations, they will not honor their promises and will give you a new set of expectations to meet. They will gaslight you by saying that you are not good enough for the promotion even when you exceed the expectations. And even if you get a supportive manager, they are at the mercy of the VP above them who gets to make all the decisions.
- lack of diversity. if you are not a young white American-born male, you will likely feel that you don't fit in. If you don't match the above profile, you will most likely be the only "different" person on your project's engineering team.
- it's a cult. You are expected to give all of yourself for the sake of the client priorities. When you voice your concerns about being stressed out and overworked, you are told that this is the nature of the agency business model, or that your problem "doesn't exist", or that you "don't work hard enough".
