Great individual contributors, terrible leadership
Pros
- Great Views from the Office - Pretty good set of perks/benefits - Teammates are passionate and excited about the product - First-line managers were engaged and helpful - They took the time to find and hire great individual contributors with breadth and depth in their area of expertise - Collaboration among team members is strong
Cons
- Lack of Autonomy within Engineering to do your job. Any deviation from what the company has been doing for the last 5 years is met with strong reservation and roadblocks put in place from making progress towards staying modern. - People are hired in for a role, but never given any of the leeway or permission to actually implement the ideas that came from the expertise they were hired in for. - Leadership above the manager level is disengaged from the people actually completing the work. I've never seen a company where directors/VPs only talk to their direct reports and never the teams they lead - Alignment across teams at the company is virtually non-existent leading to a lot of scurrying around and wasted efforts. All startups have this but it was exceptionally bad here. - Too much focus on chasing the next shiny thing, versus making the current product offering solid. This means teams could never really finish any effort they started before the priorities and KPIs had changed. - Worst high level engineering leadership that I have seen at any company. Ineffective, subversive, obstructive, and absent. These traits are a killer of morale for the teams.
