Needs a hard reset - Software Engineer Lovevery Employee Review

Thank you for the candid feedback. I agree one of the most special things about our engineering team is that each individual is kind, collaborative, and approaches their work with positive intentions. We are very fortunate! It’s true that over the last year we’ve taken on aggressive goals and focused heavily on new feature development. It’s also true that things look different heading into 2023. If we look back historically, 2020 and most of 2021 were spent migrating our ecommerce stack to a new in-house platform. During that time, we weren’t able to deliver many new features that drove our digital product forward, and our focus was largely on tech improvements. So, in 2022, the pendulum swung the other direction. In retrospect, now that we know the challenges that were unknown when planning, it’s easy to see how we became stretched in our ability to execute on new project work. When we did pause for all of Q2 to invest in tech debt, we made some improvements, but we didn’t get far enough. These challenges are typical when using a still maturing platform, especially while going through significant business and team growth. These same dynamics also contribute to some of the gaps in collaborating departments - we’re all getting more knowledgeable about our system and capabilities of the software we integrate with. Working more closely together moving forward will improve our execution. Through all of this, our engineering leaders have worked hard to keep communication open with engineers, protect their time, and give them space to avoid burnout. This stage of any startup’s growth is tough, and finding the right balance is a journey – one we are very much committed to. The good news is that we are extremely well poised going into 2023. We have full squads and have brought on experienced Product Managers, Senior and Lead Engineers, and Engineering Managers who know how to unwind technical debt, put in place engineering best practices, and move teams in our stage of growth forward. We are actively shifting to a more balanced split between new feature development and tech health. Please know that your leaders have always been committed to doing right by you, that we are continuously improving month over month and quarter over quarter, and that we care about you and your well being. - Manisha Manisha Shah, VP Engineering, Lovevery