You are a replaceable part of a machine - most likely to be replaced by someone in India. And Fiserv never lets you forget that.
There are so many layers of management who spend 50% of their time evaluating the people below them rather than actually doing anything productive. Employees are constantly evaluated but given no resources or incentive to improve their performance - no training, no raises, no communication until the last minute, and sometimes not even then.
Although now they've instituted a bunch of happy BS programs designed to give employees the equivalent of gold stars, which just rubs in the fact that we didn't get raises this year - we get gold stars.
We don't even get normal office supplies - you have to put in an email request to one person if you want pens or paper clips - and if you're lucky she'll respond in a timely fashion - or at all.
But worst of all, project management has gone to hell. Very good project managers leave or are laid off (and nobody can figure out WHY they were laid off except for the usual reason - politics) - and now there are no project processes in place. Development projects are total anarchy - you spend half your time just trying to find out how to access an online system you need to do your job, or try to figure out when the project deadline is. And your managers just say "oh well, that's how it goes." Managers NEVER take responsibility for anything.
Also the 23rd floor of the Jersey City office is a hideous and uncomfortable work environment. Cubes are stacked row after row like a warehouse, you can hear people talking 5 or 6 rows over - and the loudmouths are NEVER told to keep it down - because that would mean a manager had to take responsibility to DO something. And they won't do it if they don't have to - and they DON'T have to.
If you want to have a private conversation you have to whisper, which makes it hard to form any kind of friendships. Especially since the people you work with on a project are as likely to be somewhere else in the country or the world and you can never get to know them personally. And there are so many brown-nosers and toadies that you cannot trust and therefore you cannot commiserate about anything for fear they will report you. Big Brother is always watching.
I have to get a new job soon or I might have a heart attack or a nervous breakdown. Things were pretty disorganized and hostile here when I joined - I didn't think it was possible to go downhill - but it has.
