There was way too much politics. Most managers managed up, trying to placate their superiors. They did little to help their direct reports .
There was way too much political rivalry between groups, even within groups in the same department. Politics was not stamped down. Instead, that became the overriding concern.
There were way too many meetings. I spent 30-40% of my workweek in meetings, most of which were not very useful or informative.
There was a big rift between Development and QA, which led to non-cooperation and impeded projects from progressing or tasks being done properly.
Hiring was done poorly - managers could hire people arbitrarily without input from other members of the team so some managers stacked their group with their friends, whether or not they were competent or not.
What was sad and ironic was that most of the very good engineers left after a short time, fed up with the politics. Like the sediments found in an evaporated beer bottle, the mediocre and less talented people stayed behind because finding another job was harder for them. This caused a vicious cycle where the technical competence of a group deteriorated over time.
