The organization is defined by a deeply toxic atmosphere shaped by fear-driven leadership and chronic managerial dysfunction. Key positions appear to be occupied less on merit than through the CEO’s former Smartsheet inner circle, resulting in widespread incompetence at the team lead level and persistent operational chaos.
While the CEO projects an image of accessibility, dissent or even mildly uncomfortable questions are met with swift retaliation. The company’s obsession with “high performance,” seemingly borrowed wholesale from Netflix-style corporate ideology, is both opaque and arbitrary. No one can clearly define what qualifies an employee as a “high performer,” though it is implicitly understood that if you need clarification, you are already excluded from the category.
Performance evaluations are similarly unreliable: peer reviews are routinely “recalibrated” — effectively overridden or downgraded — by the CTO and CEO without transparent justification. The broader culture is characterized by excessive micromanagement, a pervasive lack of trust, and constant pressure driven by AI-related executive paranoia. Traditional software engineering is increasingly treated as obsolete, with management viewing developers who actually write code as antiquated.
Adding to the dysfunction, mandatory on-call duties have been imposed universally under the rationale that “everyone is an engineer now,” a declaration originating directly from the CEO rather than any coherent operational strategy.