If you have worked in a start-up before then a lot of the similar issues are found here. But other startups (at least successful ones) learn from these issues and mistakes and work towards improvement. Engage however never seems to grasp that concept. There has always been talk and interest in cleaning up and moving towards a better position both culturally and professionally, however, the execution always comes short. Many people have attempted to be the champion to push towards improvements but with varying degrees of success. Despite their best efforts, it always ends up becoming wasted. Due to this, many talented employees have now left the organization and those remaining have witnessed the failed and wasted efforts thus lack the motivation to improve the company.
There is also a lack of understanding of how they want to be a tech company. Engage claims to be agile yet does not have the appropriate roles for an agile framework. Their attitude and planning is more waterfall with some agile terminology thrown in. It almost comes off as if someone heard what Agile was and botched together a version of their own. This can be understandable in very early stages or a primarily waterfall company transitioning over, but after 3 years there really is no excuse. An open mind and an agile coach could easily solve this issue.
Upper management is a hot topic as outlined in the other reviews. There is a lack of professionalism and inexperienced leadership displayed by them which does not aspire the confidence needed in a growing company. Paired with the poor image of them on the floor, is the very visible favouritism which has led them to make poor business decisions without properly evaluating the consequences. Recently layoffs and appropriate team structures were not properly assessed which has led to a lot of frustrated individuals who are still working there.
Communication is practically non-existent from the top down and when it is presented you get a sense of dishonesty. This makes it very difficult to look to them for support as it will never be provided from them for you. If you try to have a real conversation with upper management in terms of your career, your team or even suggestions to improve the company, they basically say whatever they can in order to get you out of their office. The massive disconnect from the top down contributes to most of the company's issues which is baffling because there have been so many attempts to improve that.
Finally, although a lot of progress has been made in how they build their applications, they are far from being product driven. Without a properly defined product team and no one feeling empowered to make major decisions, their products have become a series of failed mutated iterations. This affects all parts of the organization and isn’t limited to just developers complaining about spaghetti code. Client Success is forced to make sense of a mess of applications and attempt to forge some sort of communication back to why their clients are not getting the quality product they hoped for or was promised. The Operations Team is forced to bootstrap with long hours to try to meet the SLAs due to the constant issues with their platforms. The tech side is left dealing with horrific code bases and building something with no real guidance or justification. A combination of all this leads to frustrated clients, vendors, and employees.
Overall a lot of these issues are startup problems mixed with politics and the wrong attitude. Those who are looking for a nice environment, 9-5 keep your head down and get your work done until you find something better, this is not a bad option. If you are however a motivated individual looking to seek the benefits of a startup where you have the opportunity to make big contributions, get your hands dirty and have the opportunity to move up with your career, this is definitely not the place for you (which is a real shame because it once was). You will quickly find the poor attitudes and low morale throughout the organization and even crawling up to the VP level with certain individuals bashing the organization and their products openly.
It becomes difficult to find silver linings and remain positive when everyone else (with good reason) have such a negative outlook. If the low morale does not get to you, the frustration of dealing with the politics of the organization definitely will. I always felt that all my work was 1 step forward and being pushed 2 steps back.