- Some high level members of management have no definition of personal life, and will try to control yours to their advantage through manipulation. You will have to make a lot of yours socials private to get it to stop. You will be asked to cut ties with friends if they are deemed a "negative" influence, and avoid "weird" relationships. This is disrespectful to the highest degree.
- All around permanent crunch, there is no stop to the stress train as "applying the right amount of pressure" will apparently make the team work better. You will be asked to work weekends, and if not directly, be guilt-tripped into it.
- Work hours are not a thing, so be ready to be contacted at any time. Personally, I loved the absurd amount of messages I'd get at 4 am.
- Impossible to get a fast response, you will wait multiple days or weeks, and sometimes even more, to get an answer to anything, even if it's important. Work will be slowed down by it.
- Poor organisation of the project, tasks are put on hold randomly, regardless of priority, and you will be moved left and right constantly, preventing you from accomplishing anything useful. And you will then be asked about why the work isn't completed.
- Double standard between management and employees, where management will not follow their own rules, but will immediately call employees out on them.
- A very toxic environment, where management will denigrate current and past employees, and sometimes even publicly in blogs. Even though this was "handled" publicly, no change was done internally.
- Your work will very likely be removed/replaced if you ever leave the team, as it will suddenly become the root of all of the game's issues.
- Massive discrepancies between the salaries of every employee, even at the same department or level. Make sure to discuss it with each other, as you will likely discover some interesting issues with being underpaid.
- Management will discuss plans going forward for any part of the project with the team, and then suddenly change their mind without notifying any team member. You will just find out what you're doing is incorrect. While they have improved on that part, it still occurs frequently.
- No clear onboarding/exit procedures. You will somewhat be thrown into the deep waters of the project and expected to start working with minimal help, depending on the department. Leaving is a little more straightforward, assuming you don't need much or didn't have a lot of responsibilities with confidential information.
