Leadership has lost the plot — talented people are paying the price
Pros
- Direct managers (at least in engineering) are supportive and genuinely invested in your growth - Smart colleagues who care about their craft - Interesting problem space in field service management
Cons
- Blame culture. A p0 incident resulted in termination of a engineer (with significant institutional knowledge and tenure) rather than a blameless postmortem - Recent layoffs (3%) that occurred outside of the normal layoff cadence (annual layoffs around Fall) seem more reckless than strategic. Key engineers working on important projects for a strategic customer were laid off - Senior leadership bypassed the management chain to pressure ICs directly into working weekends and late nights to learn AI tools - AI token usage tracked as a performance metric. Engineers are monitored, not trusted - Engineers are seen as a cost center, not a value driver - Significant technical debt baked into the product with no clear plan to address it - Large gap between what senior leadership understands and what the eng org actually experiences day-to-day - In office requirements are not the best, taking into account LA traffic - Work life balance varies across squads - High turnover. If you've been with BuildOps for at least a year, your tenure is greater than 50% of the company.
