It's hard to know where to start really.
- The codebase was poorly documented and exceptionally (and in my opinion needlessly) complex. Documentation existed sporadically in different places. Otherwise you were on your own.
- The frontend especially was in poor shape, this was part of the reason I was hired.
- Asking for help or clarification from other engineers was frowned upon and seen as a weakness by leadership. This was fed back to me directly from leadership while simultaniously my line manager fed back that it was very positive that I was so proactive in looking for answers.
- The product strategy appeared non-existent.
- The development methodology is best described as waterfall with standups.
- Priorities could and often would change randomly. Giving the impression that leadership had no long term vision in mind and were just reacting at random.
- You would spend a week on one priority only for it to be totally superseded on Monday morning. The expectation was that even if you had something in flight you would drop everything to go all in on the new priority. Any push back on this was seen as problematic.
- The decision making for these priorities was totally opaque.
- Blame was a core part of Product leadership's toolbag.
- Any delay in meeting these randomly shifting often ludicrously lofty goals would be called out publically in Slack.
- During my time there several people quit because of the conditions, or were let go.
- It probably comes as no surprise that I was one of those let go.
- During the firing process leadership lied about formally warning me months prior, which aside from them not doing, the timeline they claimed coincided with a performance review that was glowing.
- They gave conflicting feedback on where it was I was lacking.
- Ultimately during their feedback all I could discern was that my velocity was down, which is an odd metric with which to measure an engineer's worth.
- When I pointed this out they claimed "There are other metrics" but refused to expand on what they were.
For a company who's motto is "We care more" it is remarkable how little they care at all.
