1. Toxic Work Culture
Micromanagement is extreme. Every task, no matter how small, requires constant reporting and approval from US-based managers. Engineers are treated like order-following clerks, not problem-solvers.
Disrespect is normalized. I witnessed senior engineers in India being humiliated in meetings for speaking up or suggesting alternatives to US decisions.
2. No Work-Life Balance
We were expected to work on weekends, especially when a US engineer decided to "push a release" on Friday night. Escalations would come at odd hours and we had to jump in — even during holidays.
No comp-offs, no recognition, just pressure.
3. Outdated & Poorly Designed Codebase
Legacy C# desktop application with no architecture. Classes are thousands of lines long, full of if-else spaghetti logic.
TCP communication was so fragile, even changing a delimiter would crash the system. No retry logic, no structured error handling.
4. Lack of Engineering Standards
No code reviews, no CI/CD, no proper logging or testing framework.
Unit testing was "optional" and mocked as a waste of time. Bugs were caught by clients — and then blamed on India team.
5. US-Centric Decision-Making
All architecture decisions were made in California. India team’s suggestions were ignored or dismissed as "not practical" — even when they would’ve saved time and cost.
Projects were handed off with incomplete documentation and unrealistic deadlines, then we were held responsible for delays.
6. Zero Growth Opportunities
No mentorship, no internal upskilling, no promotions. You do the same tasks year after year.
Performance reviews are generic, and raises are barely inflation-adjusted.
7. Hostile HR & Management
HR was entirely absent when it came to conflict resolution.
When engineers resigned, they were guilt-tripped, delayed in exit processes, and denied earned benefits until they escalated.
