No work/life balance due to unpredictability of work, traveling, and long field hours; not paid for time you are "training" which could mean you are working weekend days or plenty of hours over 40 for free - some people even tell you to bill time to "training" when you are doing work directly for a project and are not learning anything just to save money in their budget; dog-eat-dog culture (people who get ahead are pushing others down; you will get blamed for a lot that you had nothing to do with); have to be in the "in" crowd to take advantage of many of the benefits that are boasted about when you first start (like "spot bonuses"); although they promote health and safety as number one, health is often put aside for the job (most of the people are overweight, many smoke and drink heavily, come into contact with harmful chemicals despite wearing PPE, and develop health issues if they do certain field events where you could be working over 24 hours straight); women heavily pushed towards working in the office; most people get "burned out" after just a few months; will never feel like you are appreciated, very negative office culture; no benefit to having a masters degree over a bachelors; short maternity leave time; intense pressure to be 100% billable and work >10% overtime - you can work your tail off and have everybody like working with you and average 45 billable hours/week but there could still be not enough billable work for the company so you can be laid off despite them hiring 1 person/month on average
