Walmart

Pays better than many other companies. Udemy courses online are free (not all, but most), which is the only learning opportunity within the company.

• No parking
• Horrible food
• Unassigned seating; have to hunt for a desk every morning. Chargers, headphones, chairs, and other accessories get stolen if left unattended at a desk, especially if left overnight.
• Extremely political. Extremely tight coupling between teams, which is totally unnecessary, forcing collaborative work. With collaborative work, it’s not always clear who has done what, which leaves the door open for a colleague or your manager to take undue credit for your work.
• People expect to be spoon-fed in the name of collaborating and get promoted regardless.
• Allegiance is held in higher regard than actual performance.
• Open communication is held against you.
• Nepotism is prevalent.
• No on-boarding.
• No goal setting.
• HR seems to be non-existent. It's well known that HR is meant to safeguard the company's interests in every company, but still, in other places, they do have some tools to keep managers in check from abusing their power so blatantly. We are expected to give our managers 360 feedback in a simple email that goes to our director. There is no forum to keep the feedback confidential. Anyone who raises concerns becomes the system's target.
• Positions are falsely advertised. When you actually join the job, the job description may not match the actual work you are given.
• 1 on 1 / 1:1 are formalities. It's mostly a one-directional conversation; no matter what you have to say, it's never acknowledged by your manager or HR. Even if you show solid evidence, they will game the system to set you up for failure for next time.
• Health insurance is not that great.
• Unlimited PTO creates a competition to take lesser time off in the team. You have to have leverage with your manager to negotiate for PTO; this often comes at the cost of long unpaid extra hours on weekends and after hours, or some other kind of favor. At the manager's whim, even a preplanned PTO can be expected to be canceled at the last moment, with serious repercussions if the employee resists. The system is very unfair.

Stop encouraging the politicians in middle management by rewarding them. The politics is corrosive and damages collaboration and cooperation between teams. When employees are happy, they are naturally more productive and can build great stuff. In a toxic environment like Walmart, productivity falls down to 30% or lower on average.