Unfortunately, in my experience the good is greatly outweighed by the bad:
- Career advancement and pay awards are mostly based on politics rather than merit. If senior managers (e.g. Chief Engineers and above) like you, then you can do no wrong. If they don't like you then it doesn't matter what you achieve, you will get no credit.
- Management is often vindictive. Bad behaviour or just genuine mistakes from 2 or 3 years ago, long apologised for and (supposedly) dealt with, can and will continue to be held against you when deciding promotions and pay awards this year (that is, if they don't like you. Please see point above).
- Senior management will not hesitate to throw you under the bus in front of clients if it saves them personally a tiny bit of embarrassment, which can include formal disciplinary measures. Whether you actually deserve any of this or not is irrelevant. They will make up lies if necessary in order to justify it
For example, bringing you onto their project to complete a 6 month work package which was supposed to have started 5 months ago, and then telling the other project partners that it is your fault that it is late, backing up these claims by instigating formal disciplinary measures, which of course take you completely out of the running for any kind of promotion or pay increase, as well as completely trashing your professional reputation for the foreseeable future.
No I'm not bitter, why do you ask?
Of course, I might just be naive and this kind of thing happens in every company.
