1) The management has mandated employees to work from office full time, all 5 days a week. While this may be required for certain divisions such as Sales or customer facing teams, it is definitely not required for the Engineering team. The rationale for asking people to come to office all 5 days a week, especially for engineering folks, is not very clear and certainly not required. Plus, there is no transport facility either.
2) The company follows it's 'Hustle Mode On' culture very seriously. I have hustled a lot, but the kind of hustling Whatfix has, is on a whole new level, even for me. While this mode of working might suit some, it cannot be said as true for everybody. In fact, some introverted folks, find it very hard and draining, as the work demands lots of co-ordination with loads of people.
There's a lot of ambiguity with the task at hand and information is concealed or unavailable and can be understood only through reaching out to other people and they in fact either ask us to reach out to some other people or ask a lot of counter questions. In the end, one is made to run from pillar to post in this maze of people.
3) Again, in relation to point 2, especially in engineering, no one seems to know the code base properly and only the few colleagues who somewhat know it, do not share their knowledge with others openly, thereby creating a dependency on them. There is not much documentation either and even if you find one, it is incomplete and outdated/incorrect and needs constant change.
I've observed this happening in many teams in engineering.
People who know something think that other people must figure out things for themselves and tend to sort of conceal information or at best talk in a jargon language that just goes above everyone's head.
Expecting people to contribute without providing the necessary information or KT comes across as quite hostile.
I feel that the reasons for such behavior are these -
a) People who already know something can contribute significantly better than someone who doesn't know a great deal, and yes they do that.
It hence helps them gain visibility and appreciation from the management. So they are not interested in sharing their knowledge and making things any easier for the juniors or the newly joined folks. Even experienced people struggle a lot due to this.
b) Because they add value this way, their chances of getting promoted is much higher than someone who is still struggling to hustle amongst these very folks and understand the code base.
c) The management also tends to incentivize such people and hence their behavior is justified and solidified.
4) There is a lot of work pressure here. Also, there is a concept of a success engineer, which is nothing but a developer who is put into production support on a rotational basis for a period of 2 or 3 weeks. The pressure on employees during this period is extremely high.
So, to summarize, Whatfix does not come across as a good place to work. Instead, it comes across as a highly activitistic, but soul-lacking corporate.
