Capgemini

High salary and signing bonus while being 100% remote. Lots of responsibility.

Awful work/life balance

• 12+ hours/day work expectation.
• We are told to lie and fill out 8 hr/day timesheets, despite being explicitly told to work more than 8 hr/day every day.
• I have talked with other employees who are on anxiety meds because of the work expectations. I've had people on other projects reach out to me to see if my project was any better about work/life balance, only to have to tell them it isn't.
• Expectations of meetings from 7am to 11pm because of collaboration with offshore.

Bureaucracy

• No formal onboarding for job requirements.
• New hire orientation is a waste of time for most roles as it's too generic.
• Dozens of hours of "mandatory training" that has little to do with actual job and is expected to be done outside of work hours. Most trainings are 90% common sense and don't let you test out.
• My account manager and people manager are the same person, which means when I bring up concerns about the account, my manager has skin in the game and is unable to separate his responsibilities to the account and to me.

Feedback

• After 6 months on the job I have received no formal performance feedback.
• I have found no way to give any formal feedback about my manager.
• When I give my manager casual feedback, he acts sympathetic and validates it and then doesn't change anything.

Culture

• There is a pervasive culture of fear around not looking bad in front of the client, which leads to risk-averse behavior. This hurts innovation. It also hurts the relationship with the client—there are many awkward conversations where it's clear client employees would rather be seen as coworkers rather than some kind of overlord relationship.
• There is a culture of blame. Management communicates the need to document all conversations so we can blame people if they agree to something and then later change their mind. This is true both between different CapGemini teams on an account and between CapGemini and the client.
• Chaos. So much chaos. Neither technology nor process are documented. Very low "bus factor" for so much information. I'd say maybe this is just the client that I'm working with, but it seems that CapGemini explicitly chooses these kinds of clients because that's how they show their value--take a Fortune 500 company with technology practices so poor that a consulting agency seems necessary.

Require people to put their actual hours worked into their timesheet. If they are working more hours than you want to charge the client, talk to their manager to ensure they are not working so many hours.

Request feedback from new employees soon after employment (1-2 months on the job) and follow up with them on it.

Don't make someone's account manager and people manager the same person.

Ensure the client knows about CapGemini mandatory training so it can be built into the work schedule.

Monthly feedback surveys seem like "Feedback Theater" without any follow-up. Don't ask for feedback one month without mentioning the results of the previous month and what you are doing to improve.