This is going to be more of a story than a list of cons. I feel that the current situation takes more explanation than a bullet list can provide.
Seismic Exchange used to be a decent place to work several years ago. I started in the spring of 2012 working for a sub-company called Pro-Seis. The work was easy and fun, and my co-workers were all great to work with. The pay was never great, but it was good for my position, being a part time student on the side. I was never sure that the company would be a great long-term career place, but I was optimistic as to the future.
Then, the mergenning happened.
The downturn of the oil industry hit exploration the hardest of any oil/gas process. There were massive layoffs across the company and the three sub-companies that were used for data processing were merged into one. To be fair to management, there was no way that they could have avoided the economic downturn, and they have survived it as well as can be expected. Everyone kind of went into the new merged company with a sense of despair and foreboding, but a few key instances of laziness on the part of management pushed us all over the edge within a few weeks.
The new lower level management was especially problematic. I was one of the few people who came from Pro-Seis who actually had a firm understanding of our processes and the science behind them. When we were presented with the new process-flow that we would be using, I immediately had a bunch of concerns that I brought up to co-workers and managers. Some of these were simple bug fixes (if you rearrange these two modules, the system won't crash and break everything), and some of these were more systemic concerns that I had with the new flow (the physical structure is disorienting, there is no room for quality assurance, etc). Whenever I brought these concerns up however, I was completely dismissed. I was never proven wrong or even debated on a technical level, and my concerns were never really addressed on any level. I was simply told that we don't want to make any changes, so shut up.
At no point were my concerns addressed no matter who I brought them to. My immediate superiors were ignored by management, and several of them were even fired for having the nerve to raise their concerns at all. When I brought my concerns to upper management, rather than an honest discussion, I was met with advanced NLP and conversational hypnosis techniques designed to convince me that there was no problem. Fortunately, I have spent a significant amount of time listening to NLP discussions and psychology while doing my work there, so I didn't fall for any of them, although I was very impressed by their sophistication.
The whole system seems to have lost all sense of caring or accountability to its employees. I got frustrated with the company and left to pursue my degree. Most of the people who cared about what happened got fired because management got tired of listening to them, and the rest have also quit. Everyone else works at a highly diminished capacity due to the sense of oppression that this has created. Bonuses are randomly delayed or withheld with no warning whatsoever. The managers aren't even in their offices half of the time, and have spent several afternoons since the merger drinking on the premises with each other. People get randomly let go regardless of how well they were or weren't doing. No one at any level of the company seems to care any more.
This was a somewhat heart-breaking year for me as I watched everything sort of collapse and never recover. I finished my degree and found a great new job working with one of my former co-workers from Pro-Seis. That being said, I do miss the old days of Pro-Seis.