-Way too many reorgs (I had 3 managers 1 year)
-Promotion system a joke, its a seniority based pecking order, meaning those people who had a higher rating than you the year before will stay above and managers will look for reasons to keep you in that order regardless of your performance (I literally had one of my managers tell me that the only reason she gave me a "strong" rating on an attribute instead of a "very strong" is because if she gave me a very strong, it would've looked like I had more very strongs than strongs and that I then should've gotten a very strong rating overall ... umm... isn't that the point??)
-The company had a promotion freeze and then fired all the low performance. Since the promotion system is based on a forced distribution, it meant that it became that much harder to get a good rating and the bar is always moving. A common phrase you'll hear from managers during performance review is: "You did an awesome job this year, but unfortunately the bar has been raised again [so even though I've been telling you how great of a job you've been doing throughout the year, in reality its only average]" - in other words, its a moving target and you never really have a good idea of how close you are to it