Bureaucracy that puts Stalin's Russia to shame. Not uncommon for tasks to be blocked for weeks or even months when cross-department cooperation is required. New hire needs access to a network resource? Plan for at least two weeks for IT to flip a switch.
Everything extremely fragmented. Thales Irvine is like an ancient land of warring city states. Department A manager is at war with department B manager, so neither can get anything done, but they'll die before they give an inch even if that means missing their own milestones.
Management to developer ratio is insane. It's not uncommon for a single software engineer to work on a simple project with over a dozen managers. You'll have one poor guy writing code while being torn apart by infighting between project manager, product manager, product line manager, scrum master, product owner, customer manager, media manager, UX manager, UI manager, IVV, release train, etc. I am not exaggerating.
No accountability (which management definitely considers a Pro). Fail to deliver a single line of code in months? Have every release rejected by screaming customers? No problem. There's always an offshore contractor with an unpronounceable name to blame while you get promoted.
Software development is managed by people with no software development experience or training. There's a lot of ceremony. Agile, daily stand-ups, scrum masters. It's all for show. Thales is hard waterfall, and very rusty at that. Developers are seen as little better than an inanimate assembly line with no capacity for rational thought. Here are your orders, here's how long you'll take to do it, now get to it.
Many managers are toxic, and toxicity spreads. Better managers leave for greener pastures, or are squeezed out because they focus on work while their "enemies" focus on mooching up to upper management. I've seen intrigue that put medieval Spanish court to shame. And so good people are replaced by mediocre people, and mediocre people hire incompetent people, and eventually the snowball turns into an avalanche.
