Culture of arrogance from leadership used to justify poor management
Pros
The old mill building location is unique and the majority of the employees are good, smart and hard-working people.
Cons
The relationship between management and the employees is truly toxic. Lacking a traditional management structure, promotion is solidly based on nepotism, back-stabbing and brown-nosing. There is a cadre of very long tenured individuals who are close to upper management and are thus untouchable regardless of their competence, and they use this to blame failures on newer employees. In some cases, new employees are hired specifically to take the blame when project failure becomes inevitable. The company owner has used his celebrity status and influence to construct a business model that outsources all risk while ensuring personal profit. It is truly brilliant, but terrible for customer service and employee morale. With a customer essentially paying my salary, this is the only job I have ever had where I was told by management to 'look busy' when there was nothing for my function to do. If a project is successful, he reaps royalties; if it fails, well, his overhead was covered for a time with enough extra to pay for his jet fuel. The company also uses a veil of altruism to justify poor compensation, taking particular advantage of newly graduated and thus naïve engineers. The composition of the employee base is very bimodal - very young engineers before they become smart enough to leave, and then much older ones who have become embedded in the system (damaged goods who can no longer work in a normal company, or part of the elite). There are very few mid-career engineers, most of whom leave for greener pastures as soon as possible.
