If you describe a situation or activity as unforgiving, you mean that it causes a lot of people to experience great difficulty or failure, even people who deserve to succeed. Business is a competitive activity. It is very fierce and very unforgiving
not to be placated or appeased or moved by entreaty; "grim determination"; "grim necessity"; "Russia's final hour, it seemed, approached with inexorable certainty"; "relentless persecution"; "the stern demands of parenthood"
If you describe someone as unforgiving, you mean that they are unwilling to forgive other people. He was an unforgiving man who never forgot a slight He finds human foibles endearing, but is unforgiving of pretension. forgiving