The tree would have to cut through our largest conference room to squash the executives below.
..Shockingly inexperienced and disconnected executive management.
..Abysmal and indeed incompetent IT management, staff and support.
..Poor physical work environment. (Bullpens with zero privacy, no gym, expensive cafeteria, filthy bathrooms)
To be fair, there are some truly world-class engineers that work here, but I've seen too many leave in disgust in the short time I've been working with Draeger. The demographics are almost entirely skewed to the 30-40 year old range for the engineering staff. Younger engineers don't last long here.
The executive management team appears flummoxed at times. They will prattle on about things that really have no consequence on the product. We rarely preface our design reviews with field representatives that are in the trenches trying to sell our product. I think I've only heard from a sales executive once or maybe twice in the 50-some-odd "all hands" R&D meetings we've had. I guess I have so many questions I'd like to ask; What will the market size be in 201X and at what rate will it grow? How are we positioning ourselves to compete in that market for the next year, 5 years and 10 years? What are our challenges to market growth? What is currently driving this market? Is our price-point inline with the US market and other markets? Who is our key competition? What are the opportunities and threats faced by each of theses key competitors? What are their strengths and weaknesses of each of them?
But alas, instead of answers to any of our market concerns and indeed our livelihood, we get a bunch of happy-joy-joy rhetoric from our executives at the all-hands and seemingly random guesses to what we think the consumer might like to see fixed/implemented in the product for our next development cycle. We operate almost exclusively on the delusion that "we know what's best for the consumer". It's just an all-around very depressing place to work. In the time I am writing this the economy is still faltering. However, I do believe that there will come a day when the job market improves. And when that day comes..I'll make my break past the guard towers and past the outer perimeter of Stalag Draeger.
