The culture has changed a lot.
What used to feel like a growing startup has now become overly political, with too much energy spent on control, positioning, and internal alliances.
At times it feels like a corporate version of Game of Thrones.
The Product team undermine anything they cannot directly control, while senior operations leadership appears to be playing its own political game around the founder/CEO.
The CPO/COO dynamic can feel less like healthy executive alignment and more like a Survivor-style pact to maintain influence.
The result is a workplace where people become cautious, guarded, and distracted from the actual work.