The company has way too much fiefdom and empire-building; people are not working in lockstep together, but instead some (not all) executives carve out petty little kingdoms for themselves and get into passive-aggressive cold wars squabbling over resourcing and responsibilities. That culture filters down from the top to the bottom, causing issues where we should instead be working together to build a great customer experience but instead squabble over who should be building what and where.
Furthermore, some (not all, but a few) departments are quite resistant to changing their broken and ineffective processes and executives/managers frequently sabotage people who are trying to make a meaningful change to the company culture. These are done in subtle, artful ways that ultimately disempower, disenfranchise and demotivate them -- and then they leave, making the company intellectually poorer as a result.
I don't think the company has built systems and processes quite yet that provide meaningful constructive feedback and recognition for their hard work. We have peer-nominated awards, but they're not effective in meaningfully showing recognition for hard work people get up to and are just a slide in an all-hands deck.
For high performers, it can be frustrating to see low-performers continue to be rewarded in the org. Favouritism is a huge problem at ecobee, historically -- which makes sense for a company that only in the past few years added an HR department. This is changing, slowly and surely, but the dregs of this previous culture are still in positions of power and privilege.
One major concern of mine is how penny-wise and pound-foolish ecobee is; the company will throw good money after bad on all sorts of things, but cut small costs here and there on things and act as if they're being wise with their money.
I separate people and culture; the people at ecobee are fantastic, but I'm actually pretty skeptical of the culture itself (despite all the shmancy awards). You can tell what a company's culture and values are by who is rewarded -- and, historically, yes-people are rewarded at ecobee over truth-telling high-performers. It's frustrating and disappointing to see.
A concrete example of what I mean when discussing the culture: people get defensive when frustrated customers vent their views in app reviews, reddit or other measurements we use. Instead of listening and learning from them, there's a reflexive defensiveness that's really disappointing -- and kind of shows how we're not as customer-focused as we say we are.
Lastly, and most disappointingly, the ways teams are treated and given support is uneven. Some teams end up in a vicious micromanagement cycle, spiraling ever-downward in their performance as executives feel the need to meddle in their affairs. Other teams, ones that know how to play the game and appease the execs get off scott-free from the micromanagement meddling cycle.
