Career progression is the elephant in the room. There are essentially two levels for engineers and once you hit the second, that's more or less where you stay until someone leaves or a new team is formed. Compensation bumps are modest — good enough to keep you comfortable but not enough to keep pace with the market long term. I've had to be quite self-directed about my own growth because there's no real structured mentorship or development plan. After a while you do start to wonder whether you're still learning or just maintaining.