I may sound like a broken record when reading through all of the recent reviews, but at some point, Carnegie has to acknowledge that this many people aren’t making up these serious, systemic issues. These issues are causing real harm to employee well-being, team morale, and the company’s long-term stability.
One of the most frustrating aspects of working at Carnegie was the way power was distributed—and referred to. Managers and team leads often referred to “leadership” as if it’s a singular, faceless entity with unchecked authority. It creates a culture of ambiguity and blame-shifting where no one ever seems to take ownership for decisions, and you're never quite sure who is actually responsible for what. This lack of clarity reinforces a sense of powerlessness and prevents any real accountability or collaboration from taking place.
Beyond that, many of the people in leadership positions are unqualified or inexperienced. Promotions are often based on tenure or personal relationships rather than actual leadership ability or achievements, and it’s common for managers to have little or no formal training—many are in their first job out of college and just happened to outlast everyone else. Instead of empowering their teams, they regularly withhold key information, exclude you from important meetings, and then expect you to “own” projects without proper context or tools.
Worst of all: Scope creep is relentless, and there's little-to-no regard for how expanded responsibilities impact bandwidth. I was approached to take on the work of multiple additional employees after they were let go/left, with no room to discuss a pay raise or title change and no intentions to hire replacements. To be clear, I was expected to manage my own, full client load, on top of the full client loads of multiple additional employees. Expectations were sky-high, even as priorities shifted constantly and the workload remained unsustainable. Despite the company offering unlimited PTO, it was difficult to take time off without disruption or the overwhelming fear that you'll come back to ten times the amount of work you had on your plate before you were on PTO.
Turnover was massive—over ten people were hired and left on one single team during my time there, and that wasn't unique. These exits were rarely acknowledged as signs of deeper issues, and even surveys that indicated higher stress and risk of burnout year-over-year were quickly skipped over with no real initiatives to support employees. Instead, "leadership" pretended everything was fine. Those who stay were often those protected by relationships or inertia, not performance.
Innovation and strategy were handled in the most performative ways possible: rather than leveraging the knowledge of experienced employees, "leadership" turned to AI to design products, systems, and frameworks. Or, when they did actually take employees' opinions into account, they rolled out new initiatives at the worst times and expected the already overburdened employees to take on the burden of testing and implementation. "Leadership" was tone-deaf to say the least. There was no trust, little transparency, and zero psychological safety. Feedback was dismissed, real expertise was undervalued, and the result was (and is) a culture where burnout and frustration are the norm.
