The banality of the work is mind numbing to the point of depressing, with variable deadlines that can be adjusted on a whim by clients and managers, thus creating a frantic rush to finish the assigned soul deadening tasks (all while preaching high quality). When combined with the fact that the number of tasks and time required to complete tasks results in 10-12 hour days, MaPS can feel like the spice mines of Kessel. Let me state here for the record that I have had jobs shoveling horse manure in -5 F temperatures that I enjoy far more than the tasks I was burdened with at MaPS.
The amount of work a junior level employee receives is highly dependent on the projects to which they are staffed. Each individual is staffed to at least two projects, sometimes resulting in wildly unrealistic deadline conflicts. Some employees can show up at 9:30AM and leave by 7 every day, while some individuals can be stuck working until 2AM multiple nights in a row with managers breathing down their necks looking for something to give the client. Attempts to speak to upper management about the amount of hours one is working results in little to no change, presenting the image that they most likely don't care.
Then there is the meaninglessness of the work, the sometimes racist or classist style of reports and client based initiatives, the lack of any sort of economic theory, higher level statistics, or coherent business strategy proposed by MaPS to clients. When this is accounted for, one begins to question how this company can even think of calling itself any sort of consulting firm. The lack of interdisciplinary value being created, combined with the fact that the data being gleaned from surveys created by MaPS is worthless for a plethora or reasons creates a disconnect between managers who are looking to add value and create story driven reports and junior staff who look at and work with the data and know the futility of the exercise and inconsequential nature of the data.
In relation to being unable to add value, resources always seem to be an issue. Sometimes it can be from outside sources like panel vendors, but mostly it's internally based. Projects have trouble getting the technical resources and support as planned. Individuals deemed key to the success of the project by junior staff are at times bullied out of the company at the whim of Vice Presidents and senior partners. Technical issues can create nightmare-esque situations for managers and junior staff alike, bringing projects to a grinding halt or creating massive amounts of rework.
As I stated in the "Pros" section above, the staff MaPS hires is changing. Most staff come from a privileged upper middle class background, but the staff was non-judgemental, relatively professional, straight forward, honest, and hardworking. Egos have begun to creep into MaPS, however, and backstabbing and manipulation have begun to creep in. Managers push forward timelines to appease clients in ways that are unnecessary, and could only possibly benefit themselves in regards to future promotions. The rat race accelerates after about 2 years at the company, with individuals looking to get the extra leg up in an attempt to make more money (middle management is compensated based on relative performance to peers).
This creates a mentality within management to always be selling as much as possible as quickly as possible, and let the consequences be damned. The typical cycle of over-promising, under-performing, and over compensating with a high quality and low value product needs to be broken as soon as possible.
