Toxic leadership, layoffs, grimy recruiters - Program Manager NetApp Employee Review

Amazing company culture with supportive managers and teammates. Interns are trusted with meaningful projects that have real business impact. Great opportunities to learn, network, and grow professionally.

As a large organization, some processes can take time and navigating different teams can occasionally be challenging.

+ Some genuinely talented, kind engineers on the ground who make the day-to-day bearable. + Established company with recognizable products, so it's a fine résumé line if that's what you need.

- Compensation isn't remotely competitive with other tech companies for the same work, expect to be underpaid relative to peers doing equivalent engineering elsewhere. - Return-to-office mandate with attendance tracking. Leadership doesn't just require office days, they freaking track and count how many days each person badges in. This is giving jail-vibes and they treat you like a kid instead of grown-up professional. - Forced-ranking reviews. A mandatory quota means roughly 10% of people must be rated "not meeting expectations" regardless of actual performance. Good engineers get labeled underperformers just to fill the curve. - Manufactured internal competition. Because ratings are a zero-sum quota, teammates are effectively pitted against each other. It kills collaboration and makes the environment toxic. - Routine layoffs. In my experience, layoffs came around like clockwork — roughly twice a year, which meant constant job insecurity and a demoralized team that never got to feel stable. - Leadership has run a once-great company into the ground. In my opinion, George and the current C-level team have turned what used to be a respected place to work into a miserable, pathetic place. The direction under this leadership has been consistently toward more monitoring and pressure, and less trust, autonomy, and morale.