Immature management, and terrible HR practices - Anonymous employee Ex Ordo Employee Review

The company has embraced the Remote working culture that came in post COVID well, and by and large uses distributed tools well (Although some meetings are a bit erratic) The concept of what is being worked on is reasonably public (After the C-level's decisions have been made), and knowledge of projects is well distributed across the workforce (Key given its size) Pay is above average for the roles being hired for

The concept of decision making is completely skewed and inverted. Any/all decisions worth their salt are made in an opaque fashion and entirely top-down. I often (As did others), complained that if strong people are being hired (Which we were led to believe), then we should be empowered to make decisions The relative ability of the newer hires (post-COVID), was quite evident. At times it definitely felt like night and day with the cohort who had been there for 5+ years and those who were new. The new cohort often ruffled a lot of feathers by trying to implement new things or generally just change the status quo (A lot of the experienced hands used to just let things slide). Systems that were aging and just left in a stagnant state for years without patch updates or revisions to the software itself are just accepted as the norm. Given the top-down level nature of the company, you'd be expecting lots of cutting-edge ideas or new ways of thinking. But the abstract nature of the engineering team meant that often business decisions and finance were the key weapons in their arsenal, which for a company that doesn't think of itself as a Startup seems antithetical; you aren't a startup but you are....?? Coupled this with the fact that at most other companies you were looking up to the leadership team for belief and confidence, and here all of these aspects were bereft from most of the C-Level. Given the above, one added layer of complexity came in trying to derive the knowledge or nouse to try improve said systems. Using things like Google, or StackOverflow is particularly tricky when working with ancient versions of software. One area the company believed it was revolutionary in was their bespoke deploy system. On the one hand this interface gave non-technical people an easy way to deploy applications and changes to be tested, however the maintenance burden of this became tricky. The code itself was using ancient frameworks, and any attempt to hire people who were experienced in this would be folly as it is completely bespoke to Ex Ordo. This then meant that again, things wouldn't be easy to improve, and as such any argument that time needed to be invested to pay down this technical debt was swept away.

At first glance, it's an amazing company. The team is really friendly and passionate. People are helpful and very keen to cooperate.

After you scratch the surface, the immaturity of the company becomes very apparent. The small team that should thrive perfectly in the dynamic and competitive web world is suffocated by management. Inertia, byzantine bureaucracy, and fear of abandoning the "old ways" contribute to the absolute waste of the team's talent. Old team members are visibly afraid to question the status quo and push for change. It became a hasty "feature factory" with poor maintainability, outdated technology, and unrealistic expectations of what can or should be done with the codebase and interface. At the same time, the company seems to dream big and operate like a large corporation. Intentions might be genuinely good, but execution is very poor. More form than substance. Ex Ordo started growing rapidly a couple of years ago hiring a lot of people with experience in the industry. Unfortunately, decisions, including technical, design, and HR, are made by people with almost no experience outside of the company. The main sin is hiring seasoned expert and not letting them do their jobs and make decisions. Pretty much every common, well-established solution has to be proven, backed up with "evidence" and a lot of meetings and paperwork. There is never enough time for POCs, prototypes, experimentation, learning, and engaging with the professional community to stay up-to-date, relevant, and on top of the game. The absolute opposite of what I've experienced in any other organization, where employees, especially in tech and creative roles. It is frustrating to see the team eager to improve the quality of the product, but all initiative is suffocated, constantly postponed, and eventually punished as a "distraction from adding features". Features matter, but not at the expense of quality. - 9am to 6pm work is weird.