There is too much misery at this company, I don't know where to start. Poor WLB is an obvious one, constant churn on vision, roadmap and projects is another one. The fact that leaders really need to work on their communication skills is a third--though this has seen significant improvement over the past year. Discord's company and engineering culture is very unique. Some people love it, but it's definitely not for everyone, and there is not a strong desire to adapt it to be more welcoming to people who don't fit the mold. Engineering leadership is a bit... odd--top level leadership has extremely strong technical foundations and domain knowledge, but isn't so strong or experienced in leadership skills like communication and ensuring that significant company decisions greatly impacting employees and users are well received or fair. Director level leadership has limited technical knowledge or vision, but communicates well and has a lot of big company "leadership training". The bigger problem is they don't seem to be on the same page regarding vision, roadmap, or prioritization. I sometimes wonder if their roles should be switched, or if our VP should spend less time debugging incidents and invest more in the engineering culture, overall vision for the org, making the org structure align with what we're trying to deliver, and we should hire a director with directly relevant domain experience who is capable of keeping an ear to the ground. There is constant churn on how to represent and organization your status reporting (Asana milestones, different categories of Notion spreadsheets, OKRs, planning, monthly check-ins, etc.), but most of this just seems like a symptom of broader disagreement on where the organization or company is going. I've worked with a lot of good people at this company, and each one is unhappy for a different reason. People seem genuinely happier on the other side of leaving.
