Diversity - Visa must be the least diverse workplace I must have worked at in my 20 year career. Engineering is mostly filled with sub-par engineers with minimal skills that were contractors with some IT bodyshop at one point and got converted to employees. Most of your time is spent dealing with internal politics or drama with very little interest from your peers about actual work.
Culture - Peers are super nice to each other but will speak negatively behind your back with great ease. Every one shares everyone else's compensation, performance ratings, upcoming promotions, family matters freely without any concern for privacy or feelings. This is across all levels of the company, all the way to top management. Most people hang out in groups to socialize with peers that speak the same language.
Strategy - As an engineering org, there is no sense of direction There is absolutely no strategy from the top that cascades down to the front-line employees. All-hands meetings are a joke.
Process Burden - Processes are archaic and there is little interest in changing anything. Most employees are stuck with long immigration waits and are bullied into working long hours and weekends. Things that are done in a matter of hours or are automated in the rest of the industry take weeks or months here. There is absolutely no respect for work-life balance. You are expected to answer texts, phone calls, IMs at any hour of the day or you are considered to be not committed or hard-working.
Focus - There is also always some new flavor of the month. Some new security tool gets introduced that opens up a bunch of findings on your application and you
spend the next 2 months chasing those findings. Or there is some massive migration effort that your org needs to undergo and you spend most of your year just moving all your applications and data to a cheaper vendor. You are then questioned on why you didn't get anything important done.
Morale - Most mid-level management got beat up due to poor employee survey numbers last year. Managers spent most of their energy in addressing engagement issues versus getting anything real done. Individual contributors were asked to be more engaged and that was the end of it. Apparently this year, it is not a priority anymore and somehow things have made a 180 in terms of engagement.
Growth - When it comes to career growth, promotions are done mostly on favoritism or tenure (need to be around for decades) and there are no formal career paths. Internal Mobility is talked about all the time but there are no protections. You apply for a role and you would be lucky if you even hear back from the hiring manager in months. You are then told eventually that the position was opened to fill an internal promotion.
Performance Reviews - The performance review process is a big mess as well. Visa uses stack ranking and will force your manager to put someone on the top or worse, below every year. Then HR forces then their 'curves' and the rating that you get is something else altogether than what you were expecting or deserved. Your manager has very little say in your performance.
