Pros
Auction.com technology was a top notch team with strong talent that delivered consistently. An amazing culture was built over the years which created a tight knit and supportive environment. A lot was accomplished over the years and the team was happy and stable. Every thing changed for the worst when the CEO rammed a misguided restructure early this year. Since the restructuring technology team is in a downward free fall
Cons
Technology org has lost 25% staff and unfortunately majority of the them top rated – clearly evident from the high quality companies they are landing at - Turnover continues at a high rate and with the high quality departures team will have to be rebuilt. Hopefully things don’t crash before new staff is up to speed - Morale within the team is in the dumps, no body believes in the new org, the new leaders and the future of the company. CEO is never in the office, is disengaged and interested only in collecting the packcheck after acquisition - Junior level leaders have been put in charge of BU technology teams and they don’t have the experience to deal with the current situation. Their behaviors show no maturity or experience to build great talent and culture - Prior to the restructuring there were a lot of checks and balances in place for hiring, firing, compensation, talent bar, project allocations, risk assessment, roadmap reviews, prioritization, investments in new technologies etc. Now it is total chaos, who comes and goes and who gets elevated is opaque and based on whims of low quality leaders or reactions to emergencies - With the previous team there was a lot of pride and camaraderie in the technology team. All groups worked well together behind a single mission, it was a family pulling for a common cause. Now it a bunch of small highly politicized teams trying to make their BU leaders happy, who cares about tech or if it will work or scale. No pride left, just hang in there till you find the next gig. Org structure is so complex that it is impossible to get anything done. Number of new features and releases has dropped significantly after the restructuring. - In the past the tech team stood independently and made intelligent decisions around tech org and stack. In so many ways a counterbalance to non technology business leaders. Now there is no checks and balances for these leaders resulting in bad decisions and a very poor culture. The business leader for auction.com tried to do this with ten-x homes and failed miserably and burnt tens of millions of dollars which were written off. Rewarding failures again and again will be the final undoing this time - The new option plan that the CEO is trying to get people excited about is a joke! Performance based vesting is a one way contract that protects new owners and management, it also reduces employee ownership in the company. Another example of financial engineering by the CEO.
