I read through the other reviews before writing mine, and as I did so, it's interesting to see the parallels between warehouse and software engineering. People in the warehouse noted any time safety was brought up, they were reprimanded or worse. Similarly, software engineering has one of the more extreme "cowboy programming" cadences I've ever seen which leads to a lot of RCAs for failures and issues in production. If you say anything or argue that we need to wait on a deployment or test more, you will hear about it negatively.
People in the warehouse noted favoritism, where some could get away with just about anything and were praised for it while others got little to no praise while getting dinged for any mistakes. This is my biggest complaint in software engineering and an argument that at this company, you should do the minimum amount of work possible. If you are a favorite or family (many in upper management are family), you can do anything you want. You will get praise. You will be in the inner circles of upper management. You will get promoted and/or receive generous raises/higher bonuses. If you are not a favorite, it does not matter how hard or smart you work. It doesn't matter if you think outside the box. It doesn't matter how well you help other teams. You will receive little to no appreciation from the people managers or upper management. You will have to prove you are worthy of the next title but will always fall short. Be prepared to be surprised when you get a low mark on some aspect of your annual performance review.Your co-workers know who the favorites are and, unfortunately, many of them will change their attitudes and interactions with people based on that. There are many apologists for upper management spending as much time rationalizing their arbitrary and capricious decisions that would be done in a 5 point story. There were a few great co-workers there that did not give into this toxicity but they were few and far between.
Many have mentioned layoffs and working moving over to China. That is true, it was happening before I was there and while I was there. Some companies use outsourcing because they really need extra help. They don't intend to reduce their onshore staff but need extra help. iHerb is different. They do not value the average employee except for those covered by the paragraph immediately above.
Lastly, I was surprised that folks were asked to use their own personal credit cards for testing parts of our applications. Finance refused to issue corporate credit cards or accounts due to "freezes." While the at-will nature of employment does allow for such a mandate, it's poor practice for many reasons. Individual contributors were using their own credit cards for testing. Take the risk to your optics and provide a means of testing that does not affect someone's personal credit rating.
