Limited growth, influence, longevity, upside outside of New York/New Jersey. If you want a long-term career at GS you better be in NY/NJ otherwise you'll always be second-class citizen in regional offices.
Jack Welch 80-20 curve system. Performance reviews play a factor in determining your quartile. Unless you're in the top 2 quartiles, you're severely limited in terms of compensation, promote-ability, mobility - for YEARS (last 2+ years of quartile rank is questioned so have a bad year and you've set yourself back a minimum of 2 years). A lot of closed-door negotiation happens to shift people in and out of quadrant ranks and it has little to do with their performance review.
Incredibly slow-moving in terms of progress because of the layers upon layers of bureaucracy and antiquated systems and processes.
Unwillingness of technology senior management to negotiate with their business partners and push back on unrealistic demands on ever-constricting and conflicted supply. Lack of planning or commitment to quality results in an expectation of longer hours, on-call status, and overall acts of heroism.
In terms of Technology, GS is about 2-5 years behind the mainstream; lots of legacy systems, code, mindsets, skills, practices, procedures. It's easy to be come technologically irrelevant the longer one stays at GS in a Technology role.
Widespread hubris. Most of the senior managers have been at GS for their entire careers (20+ years) and therefore a "not-invented-here" attitude is apparent.
Some of the highest concentrations of egocentrics you'll find, anywhere.
