So many.... but I'll concentrate on the "highlights"
1. Lack of defined career growth. As other reviewers have pointed out, Merlin doesn't have an annual performance review process. Seriously. You are hired at a given salary and may or may not ever receive a raise. If you do, you got it based on a whim of senior management, not based on a standardized review process. And that's not the only HR feature that's lacking. To management's credit they saw this as a weakness and hired an outside HR consulting firm to correct it. Unfortunately they either got bored with it or got didn't want to deal with the expense so they dismissed the consulting firm before the work was complete. Typical.
2. Lack of growth strategy, or even a stable and well-defined value proposition. At the end of the day Merlin is a VAR. There's nothing wrong with being a VAR and they have done well financially as a VAR, but apparently the owner doesn't like being called a VAR. So at various times he's tried to (half heartedly) build up a professional services practice and has most recently proclaimed Merlin to be some sort of niche health services technology provider. OK, so a VAR for the health services market? Whatever. The point is, again as other reviewers have pointed out, that the growth strategy changes constantly. This put employees continuously at risk.
3. Indifferent and / or hostile senior management. The other reviewer's comment about the vulgar and abusive executive is absolutely true. He's still there. How he's still there is mind boggling. Maybe its the whole lack of HR accountability thing.
4. General immaturity. All of the above and other factors contribute to a general atmosphere of both cultural and interpersonal immaturity. It's sad, because Merlin actually appears to be a profitable company. If they would simply behave like grown ups, from the owner on down, they could probably do some pretty impressive things.