1. The environment is toxic and hostile full of backstabbing and office politics. I had one Senior who constantly lies about what he says. So many times he orally assigns something totally contradictory to what he assigns in his email, but he denies it all the time. Other staff just mindlessly follows the Senior and listens to him like those little gangs in high school. In other words, to survive you'd better be a toady and make your Senior happy in every possible way.
2. The engagement teams in this firm is highly separated by ethnic groups (another reflection of office politics). All the teams I've been assigned on only consist of people from the same ethnic group - all black people team, all white people team, all Asian people team. So many times in a team, as an entry level Staff I'm the only one who's from a different ethnic group. I've never seen a white coworker speak with a black coworker during my entire time at the firm.
3. The performance review is a place for Seniors to make up vicious stories via their imagination. Expect your performance to be full of this type of stories that are so absurd and strange, slandering your performance, accusing you of things you didn't do, making you wonder if the Senior is on drugs (even if they are not they are depressed enough from work to mess with your performance review for fun). Everyone is overly sensitive to other people's micro expressions or use of words, likes to read between the lines and misreads your oral and body language and takes them in a bad way. Everyone blames entry level staff for any mistakes in the team.
4. Hours are extremely long. Had to work with a Senior until late night on a national holiday eve just because I didn't take the day off and the Senior himself doesn't usually celebrate that particular holiday. Mostly no weekends, sometimes overnight projects where you can't leave client site until near dawn. Is this what you want for your career? Working extremely long hours making minimum wage?
5. All the cultural thing that they put in their marketing is nonexistent in the firm in reality. Just a sweatshop where people work mindlessly like a zombie and bite each other constantly. Leaving this firm was one of the best decisions I made in the past decade.
