Pros
- Some smart, passionate and caring engineers. - Interesting technical problems (when they aren’t overshadowed by politics). - A few good managers who genuinely care about their team’s well being and see employee morale as being essential to productivity. - You can learn a lot from failure...
Cons
- Dwindling talent… The departure of key personnel has left serious knowledge gaps and little subject matter expertise. There’s remarkably few people with any deep domain knowledge. This has made training the ever growing stream of new employees with limited relevant experience extremely difficult. - Bad engineering management. With some exceptions, there's a tendency to hire managers who not only do not know how computers work but also lack basic social skills (and even human decency in some cases). The result is people with no redeeming qualities micromanaging talented engineers and wasting their valuable time. They then hire more non-technical managers who spend all day scheduling meetings about meetings in an attempt to determine why deadlines aren't being met. - Lack of leadership. There’s very few people who actually demonstrate any real leadership or evoke confidence. The company took in tons of funding with no real plan and is now flailing wildly trying to become profitable. Sales sells products that don’t exist and SLAs that can’t be met are agreed to in the hope of turning a sinking ship into an actual business. - Toxic culture. When employees try to raise concerns, they are not thanked for giving management a chance to address any issues but villainized in a desperate attempt to avoid honest self reflection. Even from the executive level the message has been “if you’re not happy get out” resulting in a company where there’s no place for discussion of what can be done better. The only option anyone has is attrition which continues to add to the mounting pile of technical debt. Senior management refuses to acknowledge that attrition is a problem saying the rate is standard for the bay area. Expansions into less competitive regions have become expensive disasters because poor management has transcended international borders. The Toronto dev team imploded in a year even though all of the engineers were experienced developers who don’t job hop often. The company has multiple sad, empty offices with high rents and no employees to fill them. - HR+recruiting are a nightmare. Its impossible to hire more engineers because it’s immediately obvious to good candidates what a disorganized wreck this company is. Complaints about sexual discrimination and hostile climate have been mishandled and ignored. The CEO will stand up on stage and talk about how he wants to promote efforts to support women/diversity in tech yet apparently this doesn't extend to ensuring a safe and supportive space for women at the very company he's leading. The insincerity is exhausting.
