Past its golden age - Anonymous employee Trayport Employee Review

Sadly the development process at Trayport has fallen into the hands of managers who have no idea how to guide and motivate developers. I came across this quote from Ed Catmull of Pixar: "I believe that managers must loosen the controls, not tighten them. They must accept risk; they must trust the people they work with and strive to clear the path for them; and always, they must pay attention to and engage with anything that creates fear." Let's compare that with the Trayport experience: "...managers must loosen the controls..." At Trayport there are attempts to give teams the illusion of autonomy, but teams must guess 'the right answer'. If their solution doesn't match up with management's view of the world, threats will ensue. This might actually be bearable if the management's view had any coherence. It does not. "They must accept risk..." A strong culture of risk-aversion has set in. In a way that's understandable - if bugs go out, money is lost. But management does not have the insight to realize that 0 risk == 0 progress, and there are always tradeoffs. Also, unresolved political battles around testing methodologies help Trayport snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. "...they must trust the people they work with and strive to clear the path for them..." There is no trust between most developers (apart perhaps from an inner clique) and management. I never saw any sign of path-clearing. "...and always, they must pay attention to and engage with anything that creates fear." Fear is actually the stock-in-trade of the management at Trayport. I don't mean "shout at you in public" type fear. I think this is because in any open and rational confrontation, the management would stand little chance against the highly intelligent and experienced developers. Instead it's whisper-in-the-ear type fear. A pattern which has happened again and again is: 1) Management makes some vague but apparently important pronouncement. 2) One or more developers seek clarity by asking questions. 3) Management feels threatened. 4) Management says - not even to the devs in question but to their colleagues - "so-and-so better watch out or they'll find themselves sacked/on performance review". It would be funny if we weren't talking about peoples' livelihoods. In fairness I should also say that some of the senior devs also bear responsibility for this situation. This is because they are prepared to play political games to make other individuals and teams look bad, and to secure interesting work for themselves.