1. Seen the movie or read 1984? No doubt the setting was in a Russia lookalike.
2. Too many Russians
3. Sycophancy above merit. You are successful if you are anointed as successful. You get a raise, promotion, etc, etc regardless of merit. If you are the anointed one, then everything you say is right, all your mistakes are forgiven. It's a private company after all, so the freedom to create arbitrary rules is understandable. The question is - where's the limit?
4. Nepotism works too.
5. Political top layer. Is this the best private equity could do? That makes me question the skills and acumen of private equity firm that bought this company and doubt their whole business case around this company.
6. Middle management is full of failed programmers.
7. People who are firmly established will do whatever they want but if you do the same thing it will be questioned. Trust is not part of culture.
8. Silos. There are silos of 1-2-3 people. Only they know what they do and these silos are what the company is made of. And the silos need to be protected to maintain information advantage.
9. "Great place to work" is nothing but a giant PR job. The company wants to go public. And they can't without manufacturing a certain reputation. Thus the constant presence of someone monitoring Glassdoor. News is what is broadcast as news, not what actually happens. FOX News understands this. Therefore the constant drumbeat of "charity work", "global company", "best place to work", etc.
10. With the kind of talent this company has, I suspect the IPO window will close without the company getting in shape to be able to use it. There's only so much lipstick can do.
11. Cloud is nothing but a massive Cloud job.
