This review was removed as I didn't correctly verify it, so I'm reposting it. Originally written May 2021. Some aspects may have been improved in the months since:
This place is exhausting. Every day is just a litany of fires that don't need to be fires, opinions that ignore context or scope, and decisions keep being made because a leader wanted it instead of because the data and good design proved it. It created a pattern of trying to guess what your boss/leaders want instead of designing for the sake of the what’s best for the user. There is rarely space for dissenting opinions and eventually, it’s easier to give up and follow orders than keep trying to argue and risk retribution. Arguing against a leader’s idea, even if they are missing context and lack understanding of the requirements, is often labeled as “not being open to feedback.”
Part of this was because there is an overwhelming culture of fear here. None of us know exactly when it started but it is very real and permeates through more than just the design team. Many of us felt as though they’re about to be put on a performance plan and fired, or it has already been discussed with them as a threat, myself included. I was strongly encouraged to quit, which I eventually did. Part of what scared me into quitting was receiving a negative performance review based on a project I was not responsible for, as I was on leave for its duration, but there was no avenue to appeal the review.
The requirements we all met when we were hired are not the same as the job requirements that were recently rewritten, and that we’re now being held against. But instead of giving us actionable steps to improve and meet these new standards, we had to figure it out ourselves, which felt like being set up for failure instead of being pushed to succeed.
Our design process is bloated and outdated. Instead of failing fast to learn and iterate quickly, each design decision, even the seemingly inconsequential ones, need to be seen and reviewed by at least four different people at varying levels of senior leadership. Before an AB test goes out, there are endless rounds of review that consist of micro-feedback and literal pixel pushing. There is no system or culture for collaboration, even prior to the pandemic lockdown, because we are stuck in endless review meetings all week. Trying to sync up with a fellow designer to collaborate is tricky because we work in such tight silos that it’s difficult to understand the context of a project well-enough to be helpful. We have almost no research except whatever we can pull and understand from Google Analytics and screenshots of competitors, which may not actually be “good design”. We end up repeating patterns simply because X company does it, or, almost painfully often, because Amazon does it. There is no research-backed list of user needs and pain-points. They are entirely based on assumptions and someone’s interpretation of site traffic data. If there’s a need for a quick design update to make sure a release can go through, getting approval is sometimes met with a request to be more self-directed, while not getting approval prompts being chastised for releasing something without checking.
(At the time of the original review) The overarching product roadmap either doesn’t exist or hasn’t been shared publicly. This makes it hard to see where dependencies lie. And not just for projects that impact other projects—we regularly don’t account for how much capacity we have to actually do work, and we certainly don’t have any contingency plans. People regularly take parental leave and yet every time it comes as a shock to the system instead of a fact that everyone has know about literally for months. Instead of accepting that projects will take longer because the team is down a person and adjusting timelines accordingly, everyone instead has to work extra hard which breeds resentment and outputs rushed, sloppy work.
There’s also the work-life balance that has dwindled. One of Chewy’s core values is to “accelerate time,” which usually translates to doing more work in less time. There is a regular weekly email report that comes out on weekends. Jira updates come through at all hours. Waking up to Slack messages and emails from one of your bosses is a normal occurrence. It feels like the work is all-consuming for leadership, and therefore needs to be all-consuming for you as well. It is nice to have unlimited PTO if you’re sick to avoid hoarding sick days, but more often than not it’s easier to not mention it and keep working rather than spend the next ten days up at all hours making up the work you missed.
There’s also little to no flexibility for the fact that we are still in a pandemic. If you need to clock-out at 530 to pick up your kid from daycare, Slack messages will follow you the whole way. If you have to step away to teach 2nd grade math because distance learning is hard, expect to be simultaneously on-call for last-minute QA.
