Raises were cut drastically and do not keep pace with the rise in COL. My co-workers refer to them as "pay cuts" for this reason. There is now more use of contractors rather than giving great workers perm jobs. My team is down to 2 employees, both hired prior to integration. All other positions have been lost or converted into contractor positions as they were vacated by regular employees. My division needs a long term stable team, not temporary workers. The inability to hire regular employees has left us dealing with turnover and difficulty in attracting people with the experience and skills we need. We are often short on resources, and unable to keep up with the workload, seem to be in a constant training mode. Once we have someone up to speed, they either leave for a regular position elsewhere or a more lucrative contract. That's the nature of using contractors. This is totally appropriate for some work, but not in my division and it is costing the company piles of money in lost productivity and lost talent.
As other people have mentioned communication leaves a lot of be desired, especially around changes and moves. Some decisions seem to be nonsensical from any possible perspective (removing all plastic ware, plates, napkins, and milk/cream service from the kitchenettes to "save money" but then replacing all of the water coolers with even fancier models WTH?) We face constant budget cuts and had a hiring freeze, but apparently we can now enjoy corporate jet service at a premium cost for commuting between Boston and NJ and we needed fancy big monitors on every floor rotating messages too fast too be able to read. It's entirely possible one morning you will boot up your computer and not be able to access programs you need to do your work. IT support (or lack there-of) will make you want to cry into your keyboard. Critical issues can be left for a month or longer and need to be escalated by upper management to get any kind of response, even when employees are literally unable to work until the issue is fixed.
