No chance for career advancement. Promotions were impossible to come by. In my three year stint only one of the developers in my department was promoted to "senior software engineer". Otherwise there are a bunch of chiefs sitting in their offices holding their ground. The core application team seemed to be antagonistic toward the custom team, the ones who actually customized the core app so that it could fit the needs of the client and make the company money. It all felt very cliquey. I'm the type of person who weaves in between many social groups because I can see people for who they are outside of the group they exist within. Management was ill suited. I've had a range of managers from code guru with little social skills to self proclaimed "hands off" manager who really didn't seem to be that interested in the people that reported to him.
Many of the projects I was placed on involved working with very old legacy code, which I felt set me back in regard to keeping my skill set current. There was also a lot of bench time and bench projects to occupy us that ultimately were canned. Morale in my department became extremely low and many developers found new jobs elsewhere. I would prefer to work on one project of large scope and complexity than several one-off rinky dink projects. I never understood the social rifts between the core developers, custom developers and developers in other departments.
