The worst part about working for this company is the lack training provided to it's managers, and a complete lack of consistency in management technique or ethics. In the extreme; I have had managers that pull down the shades and cry in their office during their lunch hour, and I've had ones that walk around swinging their ego's about like giant whips to keep their employees in line. In my experience low to mid-level managers in the company range from overworked and highly stressed to lazy and completely oblivious, and most are basically useless when it comes to the day-to-day running of their departments. That, is done by the department's "technical lead", which is a term for a department manager's grossly underpaid whipping boy who is just another team member that made the mistake of outperforming his or her teammates in a given review cycle.
While online training is available and abundant, it's almost impossible to find the time to actually utilize it. In my experience there is always too much work and not enough people to do it, and it's been that way since I started with the company 10 years ago. People that leave a department are rarely replaced in less than 6 months; since it's always a "headcount game" many managers will actually keep the additional slot unfilled just in case layoffs come around.
Raises could be better for sure, but this depends entirely on your direct manager and in most cases has very little to do with your performance. Performance ratings range from 1 (exceptional) to 5 (complete waste of company assets). I've been in positions where the difference in performance that separates a "2" (above average) from a "3" (average) results in less than a quarter of a percent difference in your merit increase. The reason for this is because anything above the "average" merit rate actually requires your manager to keep tabs on your accomplishments through out the year, make notes, and then write the required two to four paragraph justification required to get the funds for a bigger raise. The kicker here is that rating someone "below average" requires the same amount of justification. The result can be a fairly muddy picture of a teams performance depending on the manager of the team. So in summary; if your boss is either too busy, or too lazy to do their job; then no matter how well, or poorly you do your job; you're going to get an average raise.... But at least you get a raise, right?
...The interesting part is that it's usually the slave-driving managers with the big egos that treat their hard-working employees to better compensation and raises when the annual review cycle ends.
