Madison is pretty cold and boring, but that's minor.
The problem with the work is massive (at least for many apps in clinical), I can't say for all apps, but for my apps (a clinical app)
1. Disorganized code base makes it very difficult to work with, thus not helping your coding skills. You are forced to fix the code and eventually you are part of it.
2. Outdated technology makes your skills useless
3. Horrible testing process makes the quality a joke
4. Constant escalations so that projects can be cut almost routinely. The mental stress is tremendous. You have to take that into mind.
5. Continuous bug fixing. You may spend 5 hours finding out who owns the bug, another 4 hours arguing who owns it, another 4 hours reproducing it, 1 hour wring 10 lines of code, 3 hours in functional testing (no unit testing most of the time, especially in VB).
6. When you go to visit customers, constant complaint makes you doubt what you do. But you will forget about it because they reimburse for your fancy dinner.
7. All your friends and colleagues are gone, you can't stand anymore.
8. Workload varies from team to team and from time to time. At time you may work 60-70 hours a week, other time you may be bored to watch every youtube video you missed. It's a mix. To be fair, this is not an issue at least for my app.
9. The DoD deal is doomed, sales are slow down, hiring is freezing. People don't care any more.
