• 6 rounds of interviews - and none of my interviewers were with the company by the time I left. I was there for 1 year. • At the time of hire, the company culture was suffering extremely from their “business transformation” (read: mass layoffs). Attempts to backfill and hire “cheaper” resources in Budapest were failing. • At 6 months in, the organization shifted structurally from a “Product-led” organization (technology rolls up to product) to separate engineering and product departments. A CTO was placed. This is bad news for PMs with vision. • When new leadership was asked how long some of these organizational changes would take. The answer was 3 weeks. They did not have a finalized list of products by the time I left, 6 months later. • At 8 months in, all NZ-based and US-based engineers were laid off. Note: This company was primarily NZ and US-based for much of it’s existence. • Many acquisitions over the years that have never been integrated into the business or technology. They operate as if separate entities. • Depending on your corner of the organization, there are a lot of people working hard to push paper around. I had to push it around, too. It’s just the way it is there. • There was a running internal joke that “Galvanize bought us with our own money”. From what I could see, Galvanize had much more mature product management practices. Diligent would benefit from them. They were just beginning to instate discovery briefs when I joined. • There’s a strong public push for ESG, but there were individual plastic-wrapped plastic straws for our convenience in the office. (This just bothered me a lot.) These are the objective conditions that shaped my experience.
