H&R Block Software Developer reviews

No process in defining acceptance criteria for user stories. Good luck trying to untangle what you're supposed to do. The leads just seemingly assign random shirt sizes, especially given that some of them "don't feel comfortable" with Typescript and Angular but assign user stories a size of XS when it's clearly larger size. Only leads have a say in sizing. Pull requests are reviewed by a select group of people (the leads) and only that group of people. The reviews themselves can take literal weeks with no feedback. Days for configuration changes (a PR for a one line change took a week with constant emails/messaging saying to review and approve it). If there is feedback it's along the lines of, "Make a new line here", or "Move [specific using statement] up to line 3". Little discussion of the actual implementation of the code. If you ask for a reason as to why they want something a certain way, you will get a "that's how we do it" type answer rather than a real reason. Took me a month to realize that "do front end style" in PR comments was referring to Google's TypeScript styleguide, even after asking directly what the leads that supposedly do know Angular and Typescript mean by "do front end style". Leads either don't understand or are scared of generics and favor use of `object` in the code. Fun. Lack of standards for unit tests. (Unit tests with assertions of `expect(true).ToBeTruthy()` for Angular or `Assert.AreEqual(true, variableThatWasExplicitlyAssignedTrueCoupleLinesAbove)` for C# is what you'll be greeted with. Pipelines enforce a certain level of code coverage but unit tests are an after thought to most, if not all, the developers. They are written to call a number of methods in a unit test and then assert true is true to inflate the coverage. To be honest, I sat with a lead to see how they review and they don't look at unit test files at all and when asked they said they just want to understand how it's coded and that's all. Lack of standards for design/architecture in general. Leads approach problems not with respect on how it should be designed and interact with other systems, but with whatever is the first thing that comes to mind and forces that approach since they are the only ones to review. For example, we have a variable that says a certain feature is disabled in the pipeline variable groups. That same variable is then used in the code to mean that it's actually in practice mode instead of toggling the feature. So, it's then used like `var isPracticeMode = isFeatureDisabled`. Then the code uses `IsPracticeMode` in places where we need to be "in practice mode" and other places it uses `isFeatureDisabled` like we're disabling the feature. Instead of naming the variable in the variable group `isPracticeMode` and having a separate variable for `isFeatureDisabled` there is only one and it's used for the feature and to indicate practice mode. It's just plain unclear what is going on and the systems are so coupled it's not even funny. Microsoft Teams usage is abused: all of the channels are set to private and everyone communicates via direct messages. Be prepared for a long list of direct messages because public channels are not created so everyone can see what is going on. Why not create a channel yourself, you ask? Only a couple people are allowed to do so and it doesn't seem to sink in that maybe having a dedicated channel with sub-channels in it for different topics would help. Standups consist of onshore and offshore devs, so there is a time discrepancy. The actual discussion in standups typically are just false updates saying that 'x' is done when it clearly isn't checked in but simply running on the individual's local machine. Squads consist of a bunch of random people put together for the sake of being called a 'squad'. I've worked at a couple places that utilized squads and it worked really well and H&R Block could do the same. The squads have to be filled with members of a team that will collaborate with each other on certain parts of the application, not random people across the org that don't talk to each other at all except during the weekly squad meet up where we discuss work related things. H&R Block's squads mean nothing and it's still a free-for-all on what you work on because the squads don't matter. Might be petty, but the only thing I've received from H&R Block since being here is a cup. Neat. If you come in with a certain level of skill be prepared to feel like you're regressing with how leads enforce their practices and with the lack of any engineering culture. You're not just feeling it, it's happening.