Management: Senior management is based mostly in Dublin, OH. Managers in other locations therefore wield too much power and can make or break your career. This has all the inherent problems with single person having so much power (bias, favoritism, brown nosing, etc.)
Quality of employees: The place isn't 'exciting' by any stretch. Most employees are laid back recent parents more concerned with traffic conditions on Rt. 3 to Nashua, NH than with the latest and greatest technology.
Compensation: Very low compared with local cost of living and similar jobs. Managements often says that this is because Sterling does a bad job of taking local cost of living into account and pay is based on Dublin, OH. This is little consolation for the shortchanged employee.
Promotion: The upper management in the Lowell, MA office is filled with an old band of employees. Moving up is next to impossible unless you break into this club. Even for lower levels, there is no progress chart of when you can expect to be promoted based on which goal posts. It all depends on what your immediate manager 'feels'. Since their bosses are all based in Dubin, OH you are pretty much done for if they are incompetent (not uncommon).
Training: In all my years at Sterling, I haven't received a single day of training. This leaves a strong feeling of being exploited since you aren't gaining anything from your experience except money. This, again, largely depends on your manager. I have known others to get regular training since their managers thought it wise to invest time in it.
Fun: The budget for fun in the company is a joke. For e.g. last year the company decided on spending $11 per employee (source is gravevine, so not entirely reliable but the results seemed to back it up) the one time that they took us out. You can imagine what that got us. I ended up wishing that I had brought my own lunch.