Poor leadership that continues to weaken
Pros
At the time of writing this Cadent had done a really good job hosting fun events throughout the year and coming up with ideas for cross department activities. The Flexible Time Off policy is nice in departments where its use is encouraged guilt free. The work life balance on the tech side always felt fair during my time there. The ping pong table in the break room was a great way to bond with co workers and get one's mind unstuck in the middle of tricky problems.
Cons
Really bad leadership changes in the past few years. Cadent says they want to be a tech company but their hires and office politics say otherwise. They had a SVP of Engineering who really understood tech and was direct and honest about the current challenges faced by the company. He lasted less than 6 months before getting frustrated and leaving. Current engineering leadership has very little understanding of software development or the people who are doing all the hard work. I saw a lot of finger pointing, walking around the office to micromanage people’s time, and straight up theft of other people's ideas and presentations. The company constantly makes short sighted, emotional decisions. When current employees gave advanced notice of departures right before their meager bonus the company responded by denying the bonus. This was after a full year of exceptional performance. The HR department responded in a manner that just made everyone feel worse. This negative tone was felt beyond this event and during other employees exit interviews. Overall there was no strong sense of people being promoted because they were great problem solvers. There was simply an overall pressure to tow the company line even as various projects span their wheels going nowhere while throwing more and more money into outsourced development without properly building a solid in house technical core. It was more about the appearance of being a company that can solve tricky technical challenges than actually solving.
