Boring: the daily work here is very dull, repetitive and could be easily automated.
Long hours: Poor planning and management's inability to stand up to unreasonable client requests lead to 60+ hour weeks at times. There is no compensation for overtime and bonuses are small.
Inefficient workflows: Poor data management and project planning lead to constant emergencies and lost progress, making it extremely difficult to do quality work.
Lack of skill-building: You do not learn any technical skills here, unless you count Excel and all the modeling is done on proprietary software, which means very few transferable skills.
Inability of management to support employee strengths: Many of the people here are extremely smart and come from all kinds of backgrounds, some with advanced technical degrees. Almost all of these people leave within a year because the work does not require any expertise or critical thinking, and earnest attempts to develop solutions are continually rebuffed by managers, leaving the brightest employees unhappy. The current Glassdoor score (4.4) is not reflective of the general employee sentiment at all and the turnover rate is extremely high.
Unwillingness of management to embrace new technology: AP is very slow to adapt. Employees clamor to learn technical skills like R and SQL and are continually ignored. I once heard a director express concern that letting people learn these things was just giving them a path to leave the company, demonstrating systematic suppression of employee growth.
No transparency: While everyone is extremely pleasant and friendly on a surface level, lack of accountability on all levels combined with upper management's complete inability to take constructive criticism leads to an environment where things are constantly broken and behind schedule yet no one will admit that there's a problem.
Resistance to change: When I started at AP, the issues I listed above made me nervous because I had seen them on Glassdoor, but I felt that these things were improving. Nothing has changed and a quick look through the annals of this page shows that these issues are not scaling issues, but intrinsic features of the company itself:
- 2011: " No matter how many happy hours you have and how casual you think the work environment is, people are unhappy and unless you do something about individual development, work-life balance and technology - people will continue to leave." ("Still Have Nightmares")
- 2013: "Management maintains a model of burning out analysts and lower level employees to see who makes it to the top." ("Good learning experience, but they work you hard.")
- 2015: "Allow people to think instead of just being as a robot following the work process!" ("If you like to become a working robot")
- 2016: "If you are a very technical person and want something challenging, you will suffer and find this place boring" ("Great working environment, work itself is not so good")
- 2018: “Your ability to turn a blind eye to things that don’t seem quite right is directly correlated to how much you’ll enjoy this job” (“AP”)
