Upper management has lost touch with reality. Poor planning: 1/2 the mechanical engineers were laid off ~2-3 years ago and barely any have been hired back and the company has beat the yearly forecast handily the last 2 years.
The CEO does not understand the level of effort required to execute projects. His demands from a schedule, quality and budget perspective violate the iron triangle.
Lots of favoritism and nepotism in management. Many of the upper management positions are filled by friends from other companies now, some are good, some have the gift of gab.
Upper management does not accept negative feedback.
The sales and application teams sell fantasies that the project teams must figure out how to make true on a tight schedule.
The manufacturing plant is never held accountable for schedules, quality or budget.
Bonuses and raises are not correlated to success or effort. You must threaten to quit with another job offer on the table to get incentive pay.
Last minute travel is the norm but the expense policies that severely limit travel costs like airfare , hotel and per diem is about 5 years behind.
Not enough project management. Project managers often have 3-4 projects, some huge, and projects often derail as a result of the PM being overwhelmed.
Too many processes, there are processes to fix processes and processes that serve no purpose other than to create data that makes upper management look good.
No real training, we get inundated with HR training, mostly about cyber security and harassment. I have had no job related training in over 9 years.
