First of all it is surprising to me that company has so many 5 start ratings from current employees, as if they have be asked to improve the company image.
Company hierarchy - The company has increased 10 folds in last 13 years. So all those who have been here more than 10 years (competent or not) have moved into management positions. They are enjoying without doing much work, taking big salaries and making sure that they will retire here. There have been cases where people had to loose their jobs if they pissed off these managers (obviously the reason was shown to be something else). Senior management on the other hand is all about profits and doesn't care much about bad things happening in the company. There is no process here wherein you can anonymously complain about someone especially your manager. All you can do is talk to his manager, and guess what will happen.
Work from Home Policy - You can only work from home 3 times a year. Even if you are 1 hour late, your manager expects you to tell how you will make up for that. On the other hand some people come to office only for 6 hours a day and spend most time chatting in corridors. This is ridiculous for a Software Company.
Review Process - Every year all managers sit inside a closed room and start fighting like dogs for a fixed number of ratings for their direct reports. They have an excel sheet on which every QE is listed. That decides your salary increase. A street smart employee even though not productive gets the rating increase especially if his manager is aggressive in these meetings. On other hand a hard working and highly productive employee will not get a rating increase since not too many managers know his name and his manager is not aggressive. That's why street smarts make lots of presentations and make sure that every manager knows their name. If you are waiting for the right time for your promotion, it will never come.
1 month after the ratings are set, the review process starts, wherein you write your review, your manager writes your review and some peer quotes. These are just a formality since your rating has already been decided. (You should ask this question about review process if you interview here.) I have seen really smart and productive people stay at same position for years or leave the company while a incompetent butt licker gets promoted. This company with 3000 employees has lots of politics at play. It also has high attrition rate.
In Quality Engineering the situation is worse. You many be doing a fanstatic job and be appreciated by all the development, but if QE managers don't know you, best of luck. That's why your manager will ask you to make lots of presentations and not worry about doing your work since he alone cannot give you a high rating.
Product Quality - Management always talk about importance of fixing the bugs but there are senior development managers who discourage finding bugs in the product since it makes their team look bad. They might be asked questions as to why there are so many bugs being found. Even if there are bugs in the safety critical code generation products, they convert them into enhancements just to look good in eyes of senior-most management.
Salary raise - Company makes huge profits and still pay increase is usually under 5% citing bad economy(that too if you are doing good).
In end, company has the motto of "do the right thing" but all management does is what's good for them. This company has too many processes to follow. Every time middle level management tries blaming their incompetency to the lack of processes, they come up with a new process to follow. In all, the company has is my way or highway.
