*Poor Employee Retention: The company is well known among recruiters. Your coworkers leave with dissatisfaction with management. Some people choose to suck it up and choose to stay for at least 3-4 years because you need your sabbatical leave (6 weeks, paid) and vested 401k. But morale is still extremely low, though few people shares their feelings with others. The company is also very slow at replacing open positions or doesn’t replace at all. You see your manager doing non-managerial work a lot. A lot of managers are not actually managing.
*Not Much Work-Life Balance: You are expected to work in this fixed range of 9 to 5. Your boss will also call you nights and weekends. He talks about working day and night like it’s a good thing. That’s when you can establish friendship with your boss if you are that type of person.. by the way, don’t bother coming in early because you don’t get recognized for that. Having said that, it’s relatively easy to take time off, so unless you are on vacation, you don’t have much flexibility.
*No faith in Your Manager: He often skips a meeting you set up. (With or without excuses, it’s not important to him.) He may not respond to your message or give any feedback, especially technical matters even though he asks you to consult him. There is hardly any communication unless you specifically approach him; he doesn’t come to you. He says he will take care of something (for you), but he later asks with much frustration why you haven’t done it yet.
*No HR Support: HR does not take issues related to your coworkers or managers very seriously. You need to follow up with them to at least get some kind of response. When they do, they say someone else will contact you. The person reaches you rather reluctantly only once. She might say she would reach back, but expect you won’t hear from her again. HR doesn’t seem to have much power there.
*No Fact-based Performance Reviews: Reviews are highly subjective, mostly based on what he or other people think about you without facts or quantifiable matters. The goals you set up are just for documentation purposes to satisfy HR requirements. Your manager may write you up on something you didn’t do or an incident that never happened. Again, no facts are presented there to back up the accusation. When you defend yourself, he will say that he is only doing what he was told to do (I assume by his boss).
*Coworker Spies: I was warned early on by a very close coworker of mine that some of my coworkers were secretly tasked to watch you. You should be very careful about what you say and do, and you don’t easily trust coworkers even if they seem friendly to you because they are testing you. Usually those who are watching have been with the company for years. Stepping out of your desk for a meeting can be interpreted as slacking off.
*Politics and Red Tape: It’s top down as well. If your manager’s boss says you are wrong, your manager will say you are wrong. Discussion is over because your boss does not want any trouble which may affect his next promotion. Also senior managers and directors love to reiterate top executive messages like puppets and you will get a lot of “forwarded“ emails from them. Each manager then responds to say they agree without going much into why they agree.
*No Teamwork: You receive very little support from your team members. Your team members usually work in their silos and don’t like to get involved in issues you may be encountering. You also need to be careful about asking and phrasing because they may tell your boss about your incompetence and ignorance behind your back. Some people are not officially part of the team, but they make changes without notice and break systems. You have trouble understanding who works on what. There is also a lot of finger-pointing, and you may be humiliated in meetings and in public like second class citizens and treated like parents punishing their children.
*Disorganized Product Management: They say they are agile, but they are not. Business wants big plans and likes to pass to Engineering, who is stuck with a long period of coding and testing. Business doesn’t like changes because they don’t want to take time to revise and tell their clients to change. When the product is (finally) finished, it’s not always what business wants. Yes, it’s waterfall. What’s worse is that business does not sign off requirements. Engineers need to ask Business and write requirements down for Business.
*No Innovation: In product development, senior management makes decisions single-handedly without analyzing problems, side effects, and compatibility. They like shiny, new tools and services everyone is talking about in the industry. No one seems to argue. Because problems may not be solved, many engineers are spending so much time fixing issues and adding over-complicated, often hacky patches all over the place, which are not always visible to senior management. At the end, you are recognized by “hardworking,” not the quality of work. They like it when you struggle a bit and make things work somehow. Big issues may come up, but firefighting is generally regarded as a way to establish a closer, better relationship with the top. (Yes there is a lot of firefighting in this company..) The company is managed by the same kind of people with the same mentality. If you don’t act like others, we get weeded out. They are stuck with the same problems over and over again with no innovation.
*No Bonus: The company hasn’t been doing well financially. You may be told your bonus would be 10-20%, but you won’t get that. Some of my coworkers said their manager gave them 0% because of poor company performance. (It’s sort of a lie because you might receive a bonus.) If your salary goal includes any bonuses, think again.
