Soul-crushing commute, office politics and business decisions - Software Engineer HME Employee Review

• Pay and bonuses aren't as competitive as HR insists they are • Poor planning led to inability to grow software department on first day in 2x bigger new building • Organization is becoming top heavy- especially when leadership keeps driving away talent • Engineering leadership lacks technical and soft skills required to engage, motivate, and inspire • Top-down engineering- you must fight to make any decisions yourself • Leaders value and reward compliance more than independent thought and innovation • Culture of revenge- you will be fired, demoted, or stripped of responsibilities with little to no warning if your mindset doesn't mesh with the incompetencies and short-sightedness of leadership; even if you are doing your job well, you are meeting milestones, you are making organizational and process improvements, and you haven't been notified of any significant concerns during 1:1 meetings • If they are even conducted, leaders use 1:1 meetings for discussing project status instead of building relationships and discussing employee performance/development • HR always sides with higher-ranking employee even if he/she is wrong or flat-out lying • Leaders intentionally exclude engineers from key planning/coordination meetings and then hold those engineers responsible for not being able to successfully execute when things inevitably go wrong • Leaders claim they want to create an exceptional software organization but constantly look for ways to cut costs and outsource as much development as possible • Leaders don't understand that outsourcing firms lack domain knowledge and that bringing them up to speed, correcting their work, and learning their code to take over maintenance requires almost as much time of internal resources as it would take for them to just do the work themselves with higher quality • Leaders value opinions of outsourcing developers more than internal developers and are much more lenient on outsourcing developers when it comes to process, quality, and schedule • Leaders let due dates dictate product capabilities instead of the other way around. This forces compromises in the processes as well as the functionality, quality, maintainability and extensibility of the software. Engineers are subsequently blamed for making these compromises. • Leaders expect employees to implement process improvements without allocating any time to implement those improvements. Engineers are scolded for either not improving processes or for slipping dates to implement process improvements. • Leaders frequently prioritize existing products over next-generation products which ensures that the organization is reactive rather than proactive in responding to customer/market needs. This is NOT the way to remain the market leader. • Leaders constantly prioritize cost and schedule over innovation and quality. This is also NOT the way to remain the market leader. • Leaders constantly minimize the complexity of problems being solved by Engineering which is demoralizing and makes explaining estimates very challenging and time consuming • Leaders ask the same question over and over again hoping for a different answer when they don't like the initial answer they are given • Leaders don't understand the project management triangle (cost, scope, time) and frequently try to haggle the time constraint without allowing any of the other constraints to change • Leaders can't be bothered to spend time learning how to better themselves from subordinates yet they delight in telling their subordinates what needs improvement • Leaders make one project/team feel like it's less important than another because its profit margins are smaller, but then tell that less-important project/team how important it is when they are late. Always being either unimportant or important and in trouble absolutely kills morale. • Leaders accept no responsibility when their poor decisions result in schedule or quality problems • Leaders care more about asserting their "correctness" than retaining talented engineers