I’ve honestly never seen such a blatantly political and toxic workplace culture. I’m the type that has great internal partnerships with all teams and when I joined I was shocked to see people and teams already having picked sides and have weird animosity. I get it, a lot of employees are young and hungry, coming from Google and mgmt consulting, but it was crazy to see how cutthroat and toxic it was. I was battling daily - and could not figure it out because we supposedly should’ve all been working towards the same goals. There was constant thrash, throwing other people under the bus, teams trying to take credit for other teams work, it went on and on. It almost seemed like the playbook to get ahead was to be highly critical of everyone around you. Maybe insecurity, maybe not but a lot of mediocre leaders went by that mantra. Also - while some folks were really smart, there were a lot of tenured people who should not have been promoted to lead some orgs, since tenure doesn’t equate to direct experience.
