Engineering practices and developer experience
Overall developer quality of life is quite low:
- CI/CD processes are effectively non-existent; deployments are largely manual.
- Code quality and architecture feel outdated, closer to early-2000s standards.
- Developers are so overloaded that there is no realistic time to refactor legacy or “smelly” code.
- Most testing is done manually by developers. There are some automated tests, but their coverage and reliability are minimal. If you need real confidence that a change is safe to ship, you will only get it by testing extensively onsite.
- Client management is highly resistant to change and unwilling to adopt even basic, modern development practices, let alone move toward more advanced approaches.
People, HR, and team leadership:
During my three months at the company, I received some very unusual feedback - not only about my performance, but also about me personally. You should be aware that you may be evaluated as a personality, not just as a professional. This can be unpleasantly surprising.