Extreme Politics - Anonymous employee Align Technology Employee Review

I'm hoping that this review helps you if you decide to join or not (either way). This company has politics at the most extreme level that you can think of. The general culture in IT is more of ‘ownership’. This means that if a team member has been handling a specific technology for a good time, s/he is an assumed owner. Any deviation from that is strictly not allowed and fully unsupported by the old school of thinking. You will find that the so-called leadership is all about who has been at the company for more length of time. This means that a Sr. Software Engineer may have ‘more powers’ than a management level team member because that Sr. Software Engineer is reporting to a VP. People are constantly looking to pull each other down rather than encouraging them to grow. The promotions given in this company are not based on your skills but rather based on the old timer’s old school of thinking. Promotion is not based on merit and your performance. You may be performing the best (and you will know it when you look at other teams) but that will not get you promoted. What will get you promoted in this company is your skills at playing politics. I’m using the following initials that you will be able to identify once you join this company (or get interviewed with). GG, EB, MK, SP, SK - all these are in Engineering and contribute majorly to the culture that top-level management has developed in the company. There’s a so-called ‘mentorship’ program in the company wherein you’re being ‘trained’ for a promotion. This is completely abused to get your point of view across (even if it’s different leadership). This provides an opportunity for a 'mentor' to control what happens in the mentoree's organization/team. The culture in IT/Engineering is like the government office in India. People don’t work hard to get promoted but they ‘show’ that they’re working hard. They hire someone who works hard, takes all the credit for it, and gets their own promotion in place. This company has a culture of ‘bypassing’ team member who is not in-compliance with the old school of thinking. This means that your manager will bypass you in some of the critical meetings, keeping you out of the loop. The team members also favor other leaders speaking the same language (from South India). If you’re not, they’ll be speaking behind your back and still reach out to higher management (not respecting you as their manager). The title of the team members is also set up to cause conflict. A Sr. Technical manager reports to a Sr. Manager which in itself causes conflict thinking that they're at the same level.