There is no transparency about the financial status of the company: how much profit the company takes in, what our operating costs are, etc. No relevant financial information has ever been shared with the employees. This is obviously intentional as mature companies typically hold annual or quarterly all hands meetings to discuss these and other topics.
No equity or profit sharing for employees. The owners appear to pocket all the profits so they can buy yachts for private cruises around the globe or build private dirt bike tracks on their palatial estates.
The company is essentially split into two different businesses, each headed by people who wield power through cronyism and nepotism. This comes directly from the owners of the companies and their lieutenants who are either family members or long time personal friends. The closer you are personally to the owners, the more you're allowed to get away with, and the more likely you'll be promoted into a position of power.
The executive and sales teams are like a frat house or good ol' boys club. Very few women have ever been given positions of importance, and it shows throughout the company.
The old guard management and employees that have been at Telmate for longer than a few years have repeatedly been allowed to make poor decisions that would not be acceptable to a more mature company.
Much of the middle management staff have extremely poor management skills and were assigned their roles out of necessity or cronyism rather than their ability to manage employees. This manifests in bullying of employees or being completely oblivious to the frustrations, needs, and career goals of those working under them.
Grossly understaffed in just about every department aside from management which is grossly overstaffed. After a recent layoff of under performing developers, some people remain who were kept around because of tenure, rather than because they are productive employees.
The marketing, proposals, and "product" teams have no idea what their products are or how they work, and make no effort to better understand the products that they're selling. People with no technical knowledge or experience are allowed to make decisions without consulting with the technical teams responsible for making and deploying the products. The developers are expected to deliver on the false promises from the sales (and proposals, marketing, etc) teams even when the end result isn't technically feasible or physically possible within the promised timeframe.
Certain individuals dream up fantasy products with no anchor in reality, promote those products to customers before they are ever approved for development, then steal people and resources from teams in order to work around the development process for their vanity projects. Often these ideas come from the cronies of the CEO, who will then point the finger at others when their bad ideas and poor planning fail.
