I happened to be in a very hierarchical team and my manager is micro-managing. All the associates/senior associates are his resources to exploit.
There are a few things he does:
1. He avoids answering questions on the project scope and business questions. If the question I asked (e.g. what is the impact of this project, why we are working on this/that) is not preventing me from doing the implementation technical work, he said he doesn't have time to answer it. As a result, I have been struggling to understand why we are doing projects we are working on. I don't feel a sense of ownership at all.
2. Micromanagement. He would explicitly ask what is your lunch hours and tell you the lunch hours are strictly from 12-12.30. He said it is a common practice in the company to review whether everyone is following the lunch hours, which I doubt. I feel I am treated as a prisoner.
3. During the 1-1 meetings, he will scrutinize all the tasks you are doing by hours and be very doubtful about everything you are doing. He will even immediately pull in people to confront you, which I never felt comfortable with.
4. When he feels that sth is important, he will ping you every 2 min if you reply a bit slow. He won't hesitate to criticise you in front of other people, which definitely violates the code of conduct. When you need him for your task which he thinks is trivial, he won't spare you more than 5 min to talk. I watched him chit-chat with people from other teams and left me for more than 1.5 hours using up our scheduled meeting to talk about my issue. I didn't get any apology and even got blamed because the meeting was scheduled during his busy times.
5. He gets credit for all the work his team does but almost never gives any chance for his team to present. As a result, people are very subordinate and no one would like to speak up. Because of the remote working culture, the team is very disconnected. I don't even know what some of my colleagues look like because no one would open their cameras even during a 1-1 call. The team culture feels very toxic.
6.The most important thing: the actual work is different from what was promised to me when I had the job offer.
I know my team can't speak for all the teams in Fannie Mae, but I do know this hierarchical culture exists in many technical teams. Moreover, the remote working culture prevents effective communication and building trust. Although the values in Fannie Mae are we listen, we lead, we strengthen. It is not practised in my team, and there isn't any direct way to evaluate my manager, who clearly doesn't qualify. The year-end employee survey (not directly to evaluate managers) is anonymous but we will have a team meeting to discuss who evaluated negatively.
About the technical stacks in the company: there are many restrictions to prevent you from using the latest technologies, mostly for internal security concerns. I won't encourage people with an ambitious career goal to come here, it's a good place for retirement if you happen to be in a better team. Otherwise, you may end up in a toxic team without enough learning and growing opportunities.