Non-transparent and highly political workplace. Burnt out employees.
Pros
With the right manager and colleagues you can get an extensive series of professional skills developed and broad exposure to many facets of a project. They're quite happy to help you curate your career path. But this can be luck of the draw.
Cons
The reason for your professional skills being developed so quickly is the extensive hours worked and systemic attitude towards normalised overtime. As such, work-life balance is terrible. It's so normalised you suggest working just the contracted hours and they look at you like you're an alien. When you go through the on-boarding process they tell you about 'Built rewards', which gives people a small reward when nominated on a particular project. Reading through the winners you repeatedly see 'they worked on weekends' and 'worked countless hours'. Adequate resourcing on projects is sub-par. They don't care about burning people out, it's an attitude of "soldier on". A cog in the production wheel that needs to continually spin fast enough. Non-inclusive. Upper management and People & Culture (ie HR) office have little understanding of diversity. Disability or neurodivergence doesn't even enter their radar. If you are female you feel a bit like they use you as a show pony to promote 'diversity' and this shiny polished image of inclusivity curtesy of actually a rather good marketing team. However, the many individuals that make up the office and on-site staff can be quite archaic in their beliefs and understanding. Re-negotiating your role and working hours due to parenting responsibilities can be completely barred if you have a bad manager. People & Culture personnel will always back the upper management.
