UC Davis reviews

Poor internal communication on campus (collaborations missed, overlapping projects, etc); hard to navigate. professors not encouraged to be good mentors or teachers; too much administration and too many hoops to jump through with no institutional accountability for mistakes/oversights. you are absolutely just a number. exploitative policies for Teaching assistants and graduate researchers (as well as tenure track professors, lecturers, post-docs). Labs are run on the backs of the unpaid in every way and at every level. False career advice abounds because professors are too sheltered to know about current best practices. Far better as a technician, research scientist, or post-doc than as a grad student, but still hard to accomplish goals in the professional chaos. Sexism & racism vary hugely by department - be wary.

Management is often bloated with bureaucracy as well as inefficiency (like just about anywhere else, it would seem) No merit based incentives.