Promotions and raises are completely based on a popularity contest. I personally had a manager admit to me that I was more likely to be laid off than people they would "prefer to lay off" because the preferred people were "black" and "asian." The worst part? This wasn't even the manager of our group any more, they were telling our NEW manager who to fire! For years in a row I was given exceptionally high performance reviews but NO raises. The company's excuse: they didn't have the money to give us raises because they spent too much on client meetings. I worked countless hours of free overtime because I legitimately had too much work to get done in the day and the team I was on was prohibited to do any overtime, yet there were people in some positions who were getting thousands of dollars of overtime each paycheck (by intentionally taking their time with their work). No reward whatsoever for actually working hard and doing your job. Constant quarrels, gossip, backstabbing, drama, etc. created an unnecessarily stressful work environment. So glad I left, I haven't looked back since.
