Deeply flawed engineering department - Senior Full Stack Engineer Homebound Employee Review

2.0
Aug 15, 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I never felt disparaged for taking time off, whether for vacation, sick leave, or whatever. That might be a pretty small pro, but that hasn't been the case for every company I've worked for. My pay was good and benefits were decent. There aren't a lot of other pros I can think of.

Cons

There are too many things to list here so I will focus on the major problems. Management has made some pretty questionable decisions with regard to the engineering department, the most significant of which is the decision to fire all of their engineering managers and make their tech-leads "Tech lead managers". Never heard of that title? Neither has anyone else. The tech leads don't have management experience, They don't know how to do it, or what it should be. On top of that they need to continue being tech leads doing system design, writing technical plans, and doing a lot of coding. So they're basically trying to fill two separate and distinct positions which is a recipe for failure. This resulted in an environment where my direct manager was hyper critical, offered little to no support, and was generally very disorganized. What else would you expect from someone who doesn't know what a manager should do? Why did they fire all of their managers? Because it saved them money, you really don't have to look any further for an answer. Who takes the blame for the engineering department having issues meeting deadlines and functioning smoothly? Not the person who fired all the managers, it's the engineers fault, of course. This next one is probably fairly unique to me, but I was hired for my 3d experience and was promised that the company was interested and committed to creating 3d pipelines and investing in them. But that never happened and I was severely misutilized, working on their homebuilding platform mostly on the backend which was frustrating and demoralizing. Speaking of their platform it is a huge mess. It's overcomplicated, overengineered, monolithic, lacks explicitness and is generally very unreadable. Instead of elaborating on that I will get into why this is the case. The culture there is terrible. There are a few 'Tech lead managers' there that make all of the decisions with no room at all for disparate opinions or plans. I was told many times that I should be offering more input and feedback on things but whenever I did, I was either ignored, or I ended up in an argument that always resulted in 'we're going with my plan'. Doing that over and over again meant I just stopped trying to give any kind of feedback. This means that 2 or 3 people are deciding all of the system design and code style things without any input from anyone else. As a result there are quirks like using a custom ORM built and maintained by one of the most-senior engineers that no company should be using. The ORM works but the patterns established make for a codebase where you can't easily read what is happening in the code because there are side effects happening in some random file several folders over with no direct connection. How are you supposed to know where to look for what is happening, or more importantly, what should be happening? I still don't know. I found the expectations set for me difficult to impossible to meet. There were times when I wrote code that worked, was performant, had tests, was bug free, was actually readable, etc. and was asked to refactor the entire thing, taking twice as long, because it wasn't quite the way my manager would have written it. Then when it came time for performance reviews I was docked points because I was taking too long on some tickets. This one applies to a lot of companies, but the company's goals are disingenuous. They like to say they want to make buying a home easier and better for everyone, but they only build luxury homes for rich people. Not exactly surprising, but I make pretty decent money and I could never even consider buying one of their homes which really makes the whole thing feel bad. There were very few people I could get along with, or even converse with like they, and I, were a person. This isn't a hard requirement for a good job but it really made me feel like I didn't belong and it was a slog to collaborate with anyone. There are quite a few more negatives here but I've said enough. Suffice it to say that if you're considering a position here you should really think twice. I never felt valued or heard, it felt like I was never considered a peer. Any ideas I had to improve some of the problems there were dismissed or ignored. And in the end it became so stressful that I couldn't continue to work there and maintain my mental health.

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Homebound Response
1y
Thank you for sharing your feedback with us. It’s good to hear that you felt supported in taking time off while at Homebound, but I’m sorry to learn that your experience with our engineering team and management didn’t meet your expectations. The shift to Tech Lead Managers was a decision we made with the goal of aligning technical leadership more closely with project outcomes while also fostering growth among our engineering team. We understand that this transition may have been challenging for some, but we believe in the potential of our TLMs and are committed to providing them with the support and management training they need to be successful in these roles. Additionally, all new managers including Engineering Managers and Tech Lead Managers are currently participating in our Leadership Training series. Your feedback was the first we’d heard about challenges with this new team structure and in fact we’ve received really positive feedback about it from others. Still, we will be collecting additional feedback from the team to make sure it’s something that’s working for everyone. And our hope is they’ll continue to grow their new leadership roles with the skills they learn in their Leadership Program. Regarding your concerns about platform complexity: We’ve built a proprietary end-to-end platform for homebuilding, which is something that’s never been done before, and is both complex and challenging. We fully acknowledge that, and we know it will mean that Homebound isn’t the right place for everyone. However, given the inherent complexity, we're always looking for ways to improve our documentation and communication around these systems, as well as team structure and onboarding to support, so that no one feels lost or overwhelmed when working within our systems. I’m sorry that wasn’t enough to enable a great experience for you. Lastly, I want to address your comments on housing affordability. We know this is a significant challenge across the U.S., and I want to note that while many of our homes start at a higher price point, our least expensive home currently under construction has a price tag of $385,000, which is below both the national median and average sales price in the U.S. today. Everything we are building as a company — both technology and operations — is enabling greater building efficiency to help unlock supply in places that need it the most. We strongly believe that increasing supply and driving efficiency through the build process are two of the most important factors in making homes more affordable for everyone and we are committed to a multi-decade journey to enable that. Thank you again for your feedback. If there’s more you wish to share, I’d welcome the opportunity to hear it. We genuinely wish you all the best in your future endeavors. -Caitlin, Chief People Officer

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Pros

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Cons

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