Low salaries, very limited opportunities for growth, poor training and personal development paths. Strong lack of project ownership and accountability.
TL;DR: New CEO's vision is good and could save the company after a 3-5 year transformation. But as of today, Lower Management is good and human, Middle Management is bloated and clueless, and Upper Management seems totally blind.
The chain of command gets blurred by numerous, bloated middle management who only confuse our strategy and give contrary orders. No transparency: internal politics is king, as new positions will rarely be open transparently, and will already have been unofficially filled beforehand.
All the layers in management are responsible for crushing any innovation in the egg, forbidding any strategy evolution, and make middle managers totally blind and deaf to red alerts sent by lower ranks.
The lack of accountability is also responsible for creating an atmosphere in which managers who made mistakes are promoted in another department instead of being fired or better, step down on their own. It feels like a bureaucracy.
The internal development/recruitment process is also very rigid. There is no room for negotiation. HR is terrible at assessing its own resources and using people at the right spot with the right skills.
People are not empowered and they soon feel hopeless, unable to make any kind of impact.
There is no incentive to go the extra mile to over-achieve, as salary increase, Kudos etc., are laughably low.
Internal communication is terrible: Top-down is awkward and clumsy, bottom-up is not welcome.
Finally, the company never quite managed to integrate its acquisitions (Navteq, Earthmine, Desti,...) into a comprehensive whole. And thus many departments are not even aware of others' existence, which in turn causes slowness, double-work and lack of cohesion. There is no consistent company culture yet.
