Do Not Hop Aboard... The Ship is on Fire
Pros
Your co-workers that haven't been bitten by the middle-management bug are usually pretty cool.
Cons
*Software:* - The software you will be peddling is complete garbage. The software has been hacked together over the past 15 years using old technologies. - The aesthetics are a horrid mess, even for 1995. - Nothing can be released without breaking something somewhere. - After the switch from our previous cloud service to AWS, our database has been completely on fire daily. *Middle-management:* - The company expected massive growth a couple of years ago. In anticipation, Masterstream started promoting all the employees that will blindly listen to them. When the growth didn't happen, the company was stuck with a 50/50 ratio of managers to employees. The company still hasn't recovered from this. - Once you make it to middle-management, you are no longer held liable for anything ever. If you do not make your numbers you can simply fire an employee. This cycle has been going on for the past two years and leadership is still buying it. *Processes:* - When something goes wrong and there is not an employee around to fire, a new process is set in place without communicating it to the team. - There are now so many processes it is impossible to get anything out in a reasonable amount of time. There are projects that have been literally going on for 5 years that can't get completed. Everyone just pushes around tickets until it gets lost. Extra points if you can blame a ticket on one of your many recently fired co-workers. - No one even understands the JIRA workflows. *Morale:* - When everything started tanking so did morale - The company's response to fight the depleting morale was to start firing long-term employees they thought were the cause of the morale-shift. In reality, the fired employees were the only employees making the place bearable. They were only blamed because they had a voice and were vocal about the issues everyone was already thinking. Now all employees are afraid of ever say anything against the machine and employees walk around with a fake smile pretending everything is ok. - The firings lead to even more decreased morale. Every day employees walk into work not knowing if it is their last day. - Long-term employees are now starting to jump ship. *Bonus:* - If this wasn't enough to scare you away, watch for the yearly "Last year we were hemorrhaging money but next year we are going to be a $10 MILLION COMPANY!" meeting in Q1 of every year.
