Form over function... to an extreme. - Anonymous employee National Grid Employee Review

I should have heeded the red flags... It took five months from when I applied to when I got my offer and at multiple times I was sure I had either not moved on to the next round or had been forgotten. On my first day I went through a short HR orientation and then was told to wait in the lobby for my manager. An hour later someone came to greet me who was not the manager who I had interviewed with, who's offer I had accepted. This manager told me that I had been moved to a different team, and would be doing a different job. In the ten months that I worked there I found the following: The culture, at least in the department that I worked in, is horrible. Some managers are better than others, but it seemed like none of them were too interested in sticking up for their people, and at times would throw their own employees under the bus. Division of responsibilities is terrible. Some people work 70+ hours a week while others on the same team have maybe 15hrs worth of work to do a week. Zero empathy for employees. I was told numerous times that I could not take time off, not because it would hinder my performance, but because it would "look bad." One of these times was a borderline medical emergency for which I was offering to take PTO and was still denied. The bonus structure is ok until review time, where I got a fine review (some points for improvement, but overall good) but then was told that this only warranted a 25% payout of my bonus. In my ten months there I only had one 1-on-1 meeting with my manager at 8 months in (the company mandated annual review) despite asking repeatedly to have one earlier. During my review process I was repeatedly told that I was making more than I was supposed to and that whomever had approved my salary had not followed protocol. Many internal company functions (IT, HR, Facilities) were so awful that they very seriously hindered employees ability to do business effectively or efficiently. There is almost zero on-boarding structure and it you are considered lucky if you have a functioning computer with email by the end of your first week.