Summary: Poor management, poor communication, rampant nepotism and shady office politics foster unethical behaviors and a toxic environment where brown-nosers are regularly rewarded at the expense of others, resulting in observable morale and productivity loss, leading to a failure to attract and retain strong employees or client contracts.
No vision. Everything is a scramble/dash for the finish line. Poor management styles. Credit for ideas is rarely given, leading to no one stepping forward on projects to create the best product.
I worked in the chemistry group for approx 1 year, based at HQ in Austin (also worked at Egg Harbor, NJ and Charlottesville, VA sites).
I was hired away from another company for a specific position that required a security clearance. When my application for clearance was rejected due to a company error and had to be resubmitted, the position for which I’d been hired was filled by a separate hire, with management never informing me of this or what my new role would be. I was left in the dark for months, working on random things here and there, and not furthering my management or laboratory skill set.
As part of management’s cost savings strategy, experienced chemists with institutional knowledge were replaced with new, cheaper chemists straight out of undergrad. The average age in the group was very young and the experience level was low. Management regularly failed to recognize proper skill sets in employees that were pertinent for projects, throwing untrained/unskilled people from other groups at projects, just to bleed the government contracts dry.
Communication from upper management was extremely poor, save for quarterly financial updates with the the company president. Real problems were sequestered by group managers, leading to frustration and low morale. The result was low productivity and rampant gossip, with brown-nosers/back-stabbers being the ones to get noticed and promoted. I regularly witnessed these team members taking credit for others’ work and ideas. The lack of ethics and safety practices I witnessed were concerning.
Ultimately, these factors have added up for the chemistry group, resulting in several lost contracts and high level employees leaving toxic working conditions.
