-It’s really challenging to move up in this organization. Lured by the prospect of a fabulous retirement plan and decent work-life balance, CG routinely hires ambitious people who are often overqualified for the roles they’re in, which is actually a recipe for disaster when you consider how little room there is for upward mobility. Since most of us are working in what are essentially dead-end jobs and smart enough to realize it, management stresses that we should try to grow horizontally rather than vertically by moving across groups or doing a temporary rotation with another team. However, even the lateral moves feel almost impossible to get. A colleague of mine got a rotation and found out that about seven or eight other people had applied for it. It wasn’t a particularly attractive role, but there was a lot of internal competition for it. Also, even if you do apply for a permanent role as an internal applicant, you’ll be subjected to the same ridiculously lengthy interviews as an external applicant. It makes no sense — shouldn’t your years of great reviews actually count for something? I applied for an internal role and did not get the impression that they had reached out to my manager to discuss what kind of employee I was or that they had looked at my reviews. Shouldn’t there be some sort of benefit to having a proven track record as an employee?
-Management can be ridiculously condescending about the lack of opportunities for associates. A top lady in HR closed out a big conference one time by saying something along the lines of, “If your career is in the shadows, that’s because that’s where you have allowed it to be.” It was probably the most tone deaf thing I’ve ever heard. I couldn’t even believe it came out of the mouth of someone in HR. It’s completely fair to put responsibility on associates for speaking up and raising their hand when they would like to be considered for opportunities. But as described above, if you have roughly 8-10 internal applicants for every halfway decent rotation, some people are bound to be disappointed despite making their best efforts to get their careers out of “the shadows.” Be a little more considerate of the frustration that some of us are feeling.
-Managers will critique the most inane details of your job performance. They sift through emails that associates send (even internal emails) and question the most minute things. I’ve had emails go through three levels of review before being sent out. It is ridiculous.
-Hope to God you never get put on a huge project that moves at a snail’s pace. I’ve attended meetings where it took almost an hour for people to learn that the key decision makers weren’t even invited to the meeting.
-The work in my group isn’t very challenging. This might just be my specific group, but I don’t feel like I’ve learned as much as I have in previous outside roles.
