The recruiting process alone should have been enough to walk away. It was the worst I’ve experienced in decades in IT: chaotic, misleading, emotionally destabilizing, and dragged out over months. I was told the role wasn’t happening, encouraged to look elsewhere, then contacted almost immediately asking if I could start the following Monday. That urgency would dissolve into silence. Silence into renewed hope. Hope into delays. Delays into reversals. By the time I finally started, the process had already broken me and cost me other opportunities because I stayed professional and didn’t want to burn bridges. I trusted them far more than I should have.
Once inside, it became clear the recruiting chaos wasn’t an exception — it was the culture. “Onboarding” existed in name only. Access was incomplete. Context was missing. Expectations were vague, contradictory, or retroactively invented. I was expected to deliver immediately while being denied the information, authority, and stability required to succeed.
Projects were misrepresented from the start. Scope was unclear or fictional. Ownership was intentionally vague. Decisions were made above me and filtered down late, indirectly, or incorrectly. When delivery suffered, accountability flowed downward. Never up.
Standups were daily dread. Large, rushed, performative meetings that communicated nothing and served mainly as surveillance. One manager in particular was technically clueless about the work but made no effort to learn. Instead, he publicly barked questions, humiliated people, and singled out those outside the “chummy” Steampunk network. If you came through their generous internal referral pipeline, you could openly joke about incompetence, missed work, or mistakes with no consequence. If you weren’t part of that circle, you were handled very differently. I became a scapegoat.
The referral-driven, incestuous internal network is a serious problem. It shields incompetence, marginalizes outsiders, remote workers, LGBTQ+ employees, and people with disabilities, and creates a culture where proximity matters more than performance.
Steampunk’s proprietary “methodology” is treated like dogma. Questioning it — even in good faith — gets you flagged. Curiosity is treated as disloyalty. They talk endlessly about openness and feedback, but what they really want is compliance.
They promote anonymous feedback and encourage outreach to leadership. When I raised real concerns about my role, project, and growth — professionally and respectfully — I was ignored. When I followed up, I was handed empty slogans and motivational-poster nonsense instead of answers. From that point on, I was labeled.
I documented everything because the environment was unstable enough that reality kept shifting. In the end, none of it mattered. The story was quietly rewritten, and I was chewed up and spit out.
This company broke me in a way no other employer ever has.
