- High Turnover: Most of the code you'll encounter has been written by people who no longer work at Xplor. Don't expect to see the original authors of the codebases hanging around; as a result you'll spend a lot of time cowboying fixes & trying to figure things out on your own 'cause there's no one to ask.
- Uncertain about priorities: product priorities in constant flux, come back every week for a fresh product strategy
- Empty promises: there's talks of how the PHP service/app is now legacy & they're trying to move away from it, yet the biggest tech team is the PHP team who are actively maintaining & developing features for this "legacy" service on a regular basis.
- Unreasonable deadlines: you can just see the amount of corners the Devs had to cut, even in the most pristine/youngest of codebases or ones with well thought out architecture; many silly mistakes that could've been avoided given no time pressure.
- Overtime is the norm: the mantra is "we're a startup, and we're burning money", culture is centred around putting in extra hours just 'cause. The look of burnout was evident on my team's faces from day one.
- Edgy CEO: for example, thinks that one of the management staff's name is a meme - has their name hanging on a rego plate, gives hats out with their name to all staff, persuades staff to tattoo their name on them in exchange for expensive gadgets. He calls this "culture".
- Cringeworthy & Fake PR: Instagram page sells you this manufactured image of happy employees & a magnificent workplace. Also, management asks staff to leave reviews online & specifically on Glassdoor. Of course nothing will be negative or you'd be in trouble... Notice anything suspicious about the dates of the other reviews here..?
- Lack of amenities: there's cereals & other breakfast items, no coffee machine (pods only), no cold water, other than a filtered water jug which sits in the fridge that no one bothers to fill. Paper towels & tissues out for weeks on end before they're restocked.
