* Management is useless. This is especially true at the executive and upper levels. I mean, come on, how does the CEO have a 30% approval and still have his job? Middle management doesn't provide much help in advancing your career or advocating for you in any way. Usually, they barely even know what your project is, or what you do day to do. Their job ends at listening to your yearly review.
* Useful work is hard to come by. Many projects are plain old seat filler paper pushing, or have the semblance of usefulness, but will lead to nowhere.
* Things are too shrouded. A lot of the work is reproductions of previous work due to real or made up (security theater) restrictions.
* Pay becomes quickly non-competitive at the L2-4 ranges. There's no adjustment for actual performance, only a facade. Yearly adjustment is just divided up equally among staff, +/- a few shekels.
* The government has a clear bias towards the DC area even though they're supposed to be for the whole nation. Work, opportunity, networking and so on is all focused down in DC area. You will quickly realize you're invisible and have no opportunity up in Bedford.
* Overhead on projects is solely there to make your job harder and worse.
