Management lies to you.
One particular manager will tell you face to face that you are performing at or better than his expectations and then will write you up for not performing for the last six months. I literally have had performance reviews year after year that specifically state that I was meeting or exceeding expectations and that I was the future of the company. This manager specifically avoids leaving a paper trail for you to be able to build a case against (e.g. will not respond to emails) and uses his subordinate managers to deliver his retaliation via write-ups that a subordinate manager admitted to me was pushed down upon him. Upper management did nothing to investigate or stop this manager's actions that I am aware of. This same manager has also verbally told me that an open position that I applied to was going to be closed because they wanted to restructure the job description but he ended up re-opening it and hired somebody else for the exact same job description (plus or minus a few words). If I'm not qualified for the job, just tell me. It's that simple. No need to lie. When people leave the company from this group in this building that I worked in (and there have been more than one), he will push through a "promotion" or a raise and then deliver it to you himself and thank you for your "loyalty" (i.e. it is his way of saying please don't leave too because he doesn't know how else to manage employees).
In a nutshell, through all the changes that have happened over the years (e.g. company buyouts eventually leading to us being a part of Peraton, attrition, management changes, etc.) the group that I hired into (the one that I wanted to be a part of for decades) is not what it is now. There is potential for the group that I was a part of but it will be an uphill battle to get past a particular manager that is currently employed at the building that I worked in. Five years ago, my rating for this particular group would have been 5 stars and very positive ... now, not so much.
