- Out-dated culture, heavy on old-school style political maneuvering to the degree that ideas and innovation are generally stifled. If you do happen to bring something solid to the table that a more Machiavellian colleague notices, he will take it for his own and give you little to no credit and probably not fully flesh out.
- Lack of mentoring - While you might be surrounded by great minds, you will only get to learn by osmosis even if you ask for mentoring. If you are not already at the top of your game upon hiring, you will be side-lined. There is little opportunity to learn and grow your career, despite any promise you might hold. This cultural aspect also fails to create managers who jump on teachable moments as opportunities to develop their staff and expand on ideas.
- These same brilliant minds while "waxing poetic" in highly-intelligent and fascinating discourse and debates of critical thinking and industry expertise often get so bogged down by the political strategies of consensus based decision making that progress is slow (which in tech, spells eventual death). There are few meetings less than 90 minutes and that is often weekly.
- Initiative is not only not encouraged or rarely rewarded, but is sometimes actively disapproved of. Honestly, it sometimes seems like one's proclivity for initiative is perceived as "making another look bad" rather than doing what needs to be done for the good of the project. Rolling up your sleeves and digging in as a team is not part of the culture here.
- Multiply all of the above x10 if you are a woman and then some. Several women colleagues over the years have left in frustration for having no actual seat at the table and ideas repeatedly being co-opted by male team members. This is as true in the more gender-balanced population of the marketing department as it is in the heavily male-skewed engineering. department.
