I hate writing this as I genuinely loved the place and the people for the first 6-12 months I was there but despite so many people telling them what’s wrong it doesn’t get through so have to feedback somewhere they can’t just sweep it under the carpet (though if rumours are true - and look for yourself, it seems they are - a few 5 star reviews will be written soon to smudge this out)
All the talk of culture; people there long term miss the old days, people there short term are busy looking for new jobs.
Lots (relative) of people leave during probation.
Leadership can’t take criticism - even some of the glassdoor reviews appear to be fake? There’s a 5 star systems engineer review from Feb and only one of our Systems Engineers had been there anywhere near that long & they would definitely not be handing out 5 stars (they’re also leaving I understand)?
Entire team from when I joined the company (less than 2 years) has resigned; lost two managers (both awesome) & everything went to ruin after the second one left. How do you lose 8+ people from one team and not see the issues?
‘Blind’ senior leadership who won’t hear criticism or wash over it with “don’t worry, we’re fixing it” without any explanation of how.
Knee jerk/reactive ‘planning’ - today we go left, tomorrow we go right, the day after, let’s wait and see.
The best people have already left and the trend is ever downward - I genuinely don’t know how you turn it around with the people in charge. I’d quote something my manager said here but I was already insulted/accused of leaving because he’d “effectively talked me into it” (seems unimaginable I used my own brain to make the decision?)
Hiring is scattergun with no consistency - feels very ‘bums on seats’
One of our owners visited the office for the first time since pre-covid last year; despite there being <15 people in the office and him walking past multiple times, he was still too important/me too unimportant to even say hello to? Don’t need pats on the head but just felt very cliquey.
Backstabbing/political stuff going on; never really saw this until my manager left, but then witnessed them try to character assassinate him - opened my eyes to where this was/has happened elsewhere (made my mind up that it was time to go)
Anyone exceptional left as they stood out and were pushed out - don’t know if from jealousy, malice or they just got frustrated at incompetence around them?
Management have a very ‘them & us’ approach; we’re there to do their bidding but there’s little trust for the engineers - they have to own/design everything? “Too many do-ers and not enough work enablers“ was a line I heard/agreed with?
It’s getting worse, not better; I was upset when my manager left but two of our leaders put the boot in saying he was ‘impatient’ & ‘unrealistic’ for leaving as nothing could be sorted that quick/things would be fixed soon; given the rest of the team has now left because it’s got so much worse I think we know where the problem really lies?
So many people quit without another role lined up - they just want/need to get out. A lot of the people left are either paid too much (based on what they say, they can’t get the salary elsewhere) or have been promoted to a level where they think they’re too important to leave maybe?
People are flagged/marked as ‘negative’ if they feedback/complain/try to make things better; largely kept to myself/my reporting line but seeing people you like get afflicted by this is horrible.
On-call; goes with the territory, but often for things 1-2 people maximum know how to fix in the company and often a result of tech debt we never got chance to fix as we’re doing constant releases/re-releases for the previously failed one.
Will stop here as could write a lot more - just SO glad I got out of there, place had eroded my self confidence to the point I felt I couldn’t leave!
