There is no concept of work/life balance. Work hours are officially 9am - 6pm, but anticipate last-minute meetings or tasks from your manager that often hold you late into the evening. Be expected to be asked to come in on Saturday as well, if only to make a showing for the CEO. Face time and tenure are valued far more highly than actual results or one's ability to do the task at hand. Most of the time managers are running interference to your work, trying to anticipate the CEO's next ask. All hands meetings and irrelevant training sessions erode the useful working hours during the day.
Since there is no VPN access for local employees, one has to stay well after hours in order to get any actual work done. Employees are expected to be in the office by 9am and stay until 6pm, and there is no option of working from home. Practically any time out of the office outside of lunchtime requires you to take vacation or sick days, which accrue fractionally at a paltry 10 vacation days and 5 sick days per year.
Titles, raises, and compensation are far too arbitrary and are as much about who one knows at the company and the rapport with one's own manager rather than what experience and potential the employee brings to the table.
There is a lot of backstabbing and office politics with most employees engaging in behavior to serve their own self-interests rather than looking to grow the business. Managers kowtow to the CEO even when it is not in the best interest of the company because they are too afraid to voice a dissenting opinion. This mentality permeates through all levels of the organization, and most employees who stay longterm have learned to keep their heads down and run out the clock. Those who try to be disruptive - in a positive sense - get ridiculed publicly.
Turnover in many teams is high. Those who have the ability to leave for better opportunities often do, and those who stay seem to be there only for either a paycheck or immigration purposes. When new employees join, the onus is placed on teammates, sometimes even in positions junior to the new employee, to show them the ropes. Managers give little in the way of formal training, and employees are left to their own devices when it comes to figuring things out.
Defined processes are often lacking, and those that do exist are far too onerous and manual for a company of this size. The CEO has to sign off on practically every decision. This often results in long lines outside his office to get approval for many routine decisions that in any other organization wouldn't even require approval above one's own manager.
