* very top-down culture (a few teams manage to resist this, for awhile)
* internal tech is dated and underinvested (e.g., website built on Perl)
* benefits and employee equipment are substandard for the tech industry (e.g., almost no perks, 3-5yo laptop for you)
* power is highly concentrated in managers, especially due to the peer review feedback process (anonymized and filtered by the manager; so the manager has total control over your performance)
* employees aren't valued. You're there to do a job, for which you're compensated. That's it. "Every day is day 1." = "how you performed last year is irrelevant"
* compensation is skewed and miscommunicated to the employee. To wit:
* There are no signing bonuses; that's just compensation shifted from stock to cash in year 1 (and sometimes year 2).
* If the stock goes up and your actual compensation exceeds your target compensation, you will get no subsequent stock grants (until you're back under target).
* Vesting schedule is every 6 months after a year, at 5%, 5%, 10%, 10%, 15%, 15%, 20%, 20%. This design is intentional, because many employees attrit after the first year or two. A large fraction of employees quit after year 4, when the first stock grant has completely vested. Overall undesired attrition is > 14%.
* NYT article is 85-90% true. Quite a few managers (at all levels) are really horrible to work for.
