* Moving from program to program can be difficult. The ramp up time for programs is atrocious. You can literally spend a month trying to become fairly competent and useful on a program. The programs really need to try to put together a resource package (e.g a wiki) for new transfers.
* Work load is feast-or-famine. At times you will be completely slammed and asked to work overtime and then the following week you'll be twiddling your thumbs while your lead tries to find something for you to do. Of course you then get a guilt trip for not being productive.
* Some programs have a severe resource bottleneck that can lead into situations where you have to work night shifts. This is a bit ridiculous since salaried employees do not get a shift differential and there is absolutely no acknowledgement or appreciation when an employee has to work the 6:00pm-2:00am shift. I don't see how this can be expected.
* "Just get it done" mentality. Leads and managers who are constantly worrying about program performance tend to underbid the difficulty of tasks then are quick to throw engineers under the bus when they are unable to finish a task on budget. (e.g they tell their managers that they tried to meet budget then blame the engineers when the budget is blown or the schedule is slipped).
