Abysmal management from middle to even some VPs. (Micromanage, terrible use of tooling, no consistency, failures to be upfront, Toxic) The culture is either non-existent or toxic.
You're nothing more than a cog in the machine, and you will be belittled and constantly talked down to - Unless you're part of Sales, in which case you can literally do no wrong right up until clients churn. It genuinely feels like those old 80s shyster sales tactics. I have never seen an organization so hellbent on not keeping their sales folks accountable, and then punishing others who have to clean up sales messes.
Add to that, constantly shifting priorities. We'll be told one thing this week, and it'll completely change or be forgotten about next week. The tooling to keep track of all this is terrible as well - you'd think an organization that's all about shifting left would have some great automation tools, but i can't tell you how many google sheets have duplicated data.
You could be a hero one day, and the next you get ostracized because you dared question one of the 'chosen ones' on a legitimate issue. Add on top of that, terrible tooling for keeping track. Each team is left to their own devices, which leads to extreme discongruity
It saps away any desire you have to work hard, or even smart. In fact, working smart is almost discouraged because that means others need to keep up with your plans/work and they don't want to make that effort since they're tapped out from everything else going on.
And that's the tip of the iceberg. What the "Startup within a Startup Model" has done is created a balkanization of each group spending more time justifying their existence and blaming others for their failures than any accountability. Nobody wants to be the accountable one for an org this large when things go bad - and that leads to intense disagreements, up to and including genuine hatred. I've never experienced such a toxic work environment.
It's a situation where no one wants to rock the boat, but the boat is already capsized and floating just because of the air bubble inside.
There is also clear and abundant nepotism when it comes to hiring, promotions, and more. If you're not one of their 'chosen', or extremely good at your job (which is nigh on impossible because of the shifting tectonics of the entire org) then you may as well just accept you're not moving up, and should instead look for how to move on.
I have no doubt that Harness will be a successful and large corporation, but the hurdles to work there are so laughably absurd, you need to really question if this kind of work is what you want to do if you at all value being innovative with you work.
