1. There is a painful discrimination and playing favorites in the company, which is quite discouraging and hurtful. For instance in our team, the hirings and interviews would happen behind the walls, and only employees with certain citizenship or nationality were asked to interview the new candidates. A small portion of the team members with certain citizenship were making all the decisions of our team behind the scenes.
2. "Pretending to manage" is assumed more valuable than the technical work. I'd say the technical employees and scientists are least valued in the company, and even office coordinators have more power.
3. The layoffs were unannounced. One day out of the blue, you were working normally, and after 2 minutes you were laid off, along with the other 25% of the employees. But I think they had made their decisions much earlier than that. I know because the changes in the tasking, delegation, and appreciation showed the trend.
4. Salary is quite low compared to MA statistics. No 401k matching. No sign-on bonus. No yearly bonus. Poor value of stock options that are only worth a few hundred dollars.
5. Blunt and hurtful criticism from the managers.
6. The company is in Salem MA. Even though there is a work from home policy, but there is an unspoken force to push people to work onsite. When people keep working from home, gradually the managers rule them out from the news and decisions.
7 . Cheap T-shirts that you are forced to wear; cheap weekly lunches that are just meant to do a head-count (to see who is working from home and who is onsite).
8. The quarterly offsite events that would only take from your personal time over the weekends, which is quite undesirable for someone that has a family.