Work/life balance is non-existent ... management preaches it loud enough and tells you how the new model will make it happen, but the reality is, if you don't work more than a 40 hour week consistently there is no way to get all the work done that is expected. There are exceptions ... there are people who have so little direction from their management that they struggle to find enough to fill their time (these are often people who've carried the workload of two or more people in years past and thus apparently proved to management that they can't be scared off by overwork!!)
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Management has been saying "do more with less" for so long and IT has been pulling it off for so long, that now they are convinced we can do anything with nothing. There are even departments where management has instituted mandatory 45 hour work weeks (an increase from the 40 hr work week most people signed up for) with no pay increase. It's legal because everyone affected is salaried (exempt from the protections of labor law). But by no stretch of the imagination could it be called ethical. In case you don't want to do the math that's effectively a 12% per hour pay-cut!!
As a measure of just how unreasonable the expectations are - 2 contractors at ESI (who are paid by the hour for every hour they work!!) have told their contracting companies that they want to be placed somewhere else or they will quit because the expectations are unreasonable!
Recognition programs are being eliminated and what remains is a joke. A telling point is that the only "Employee of the Quarter" who was not a manager in the last five years was a janitor who literally saved someones life on the premises! Every Employee of the Year as far back as i can remember has been a manager ... why are managers even eligible ?
Other "perks" that have been eliminated or severely curtailed, casual Friday, a small gift on a milestone anniversary (replaced by an email from the CEO's secretary), flexible work hours & working remotely.
Project management is a black hole of dissatisfaction and despair - project managers are given 8 to 10 projects to manage, held accountable for the on time/on budget delivery and have no authority to assign (or even keep assigned) resources. Responsibility without authority is a recipe for failure.
(There are even a few positions which have the opposite situation - authority without accountability. not a problem for the lucky few in this situation, but boy, does it cause a ton of pain for the people trying to fulfill the whims of these folks! A recipe for disaster if ever there was one.)
Technical leads have to fill the roles of project managers more often than not (see previous point) in addition to being the technical leads for offshore resources who have no understanding of the complex systems they are changing and minimal skills in the languages they are working in.
I recently heard that as many as 25 of the account management team had taken time off for mental health reasons and at least 3 people that i know personally have had stress related health issues some are even taking anti-depressants to enable them to continue to work there.
A manager of my acquaintance described the management philosophy at ESI as "Kiss up & Kick down." and told me that managing up was more important than managing people. That's a sad commentary on the entire management organization. ESI doesn't have leaders and managers, they have bosses.
The work environment is positively toxic. Morale is at an all time low and it's getting worse. People sit in the parking lot and have to psych themselves up to go in the building or instantly get stress headaches when they sit down at their desks. The stress is thick enough to cut and I wouldn't be surprised to hear that someone snapped and did something "unfortunate".
