Where should I start? There were so many things surprised me on and on.
I joined this team for a project with national biggest power grid operator 3 years ago. The project was intended to last for 3 years, but after 1 year, the project was held because we were not delivering what our customer wanted and we were burning their money like rising rocket. Let's see what happened during 3 years afterwards
1. The team could not attract any new customer
2. We lived on company's R&D money because they thought we can do "Research work"
3. I invented some models using two month time and numerous people worked on it since and could not even duplicate my work in a three years time frame.
4. We begged for some work to do for our old customer, they did give us some small jobs, but didn't pay us. We use R&D money to do works for the customer, which is called R&D activity
What surprised me most are:
1. The projects were led by incompetent program managers who totally had no clue what should be done in order to accomplish a project. One of whom never wrote a line of software code in his life, but was leading the software project. So...
2. No matter how incompetent the managers were, they tried their best to have everything under their control/management. If you wanted to do something that made things much better, you were blamed
3. No matter how bad the performance of the team, the managers got all the bonus and promotions. They went to VP or senior manager. People who did the actual work got 2-3% increase annually
4. In order to enhance the management, they hired two more managers to manage the team. They are no better. But the team now sounds more structurally "competitive": 3 engineers and 4 managers.
5. The projects still go on and on without any achievement, but it is company's money and no one seems to care
6. You'd better to be quiet. If you point this to the manager, you will be considered negative.
I am leaving this company, not matter what happens. I don't think any talent people would stay in such an environment if he/she wants to have his/her career future.