The most significant reasons for the downward trend in experience fall under the "cultural" category. Culture is what has made HC such a great place to work in the past, and it is what has driven the decrease in enjoyment for me as time has gone on.
We have gotten more into micro-management. This used to be almost non-existent at HC but has become more and more normal with time and even more significantly as we began to prepare to go public a few years back. More middle management, and management focused processes like PDLC (Product Development Life Cycle) and others have made it increasingly difficult to get things done. I have watched products be delayed and rescheduled for PDLC sessions during periods of over a year. That is not an exaggeration…over a year of people designing, developing, prototyping, testing, re-hashing, and otherwise working on projects while in the meantime PDLC reviews get postponed, rescheduled, pushed off, etc. due to things like executive leadership scheduling difficulties, conflicting managers pushing and pulling things in their preferred directions, and other such types of un-productive activity. Sometimes the cans just keep getting kicked down the road, other times they eventually get crushed and thrown away altogether. Either way we could save ourselves a lot of effort and grief by cutting out some red tape and getting back to letting our smart, hardworking, and humble people build things. Our failure to execute gets very frustrating to those involved in the work. Going public only seems to have made this worse. Leadership trainings and evaluations don't seem to have helped either.
We have gone from having a culture of innovation to a culture of acquisition. Acquisition can be a good strategy and, in many aspects may be what we need to take HC to the next stage of success, but in other ways has been a big disappointment. Despite leaders at the top reiterating that they would "absolutely do it again" with regards to all the acquisitions so far, front liners are often left scratching their heads as to why we've bought some solutions instead of building them. We used to focus highly on innovation and hold "innovation days", we don't really do that anymore. Open space is ok, but for most it hasn't been very effective. We're only picking up steam with acquisitions, and the messaging is that we intend to keep that up. I trust most of our executive leadership highly, but I've also seen firsthand where we could have built solutions rather than buy if we were only willing and able to invest in and execute on them like we should. I believe if we had built rather than bought in some cases we would have ended up with a better solution at a lower overall investment. Unfortunately, we seem to drag our feet until it's too late to build and as a result put ourselves in a position where we have to buy to stay competitive. Furthermore, acquisitions seem to be making the micro-management problem discussed above worse.
Career progression has been an area of discontent for many HC employees for several years. Despite efforts to address this, it doesn't seem to be improving for most. In several years here I've been selective about positions I've applied for, but 40% of them have been eliminated before ever getting filled, and for the other 60% I've been a finalist but not selected. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride. Despite this I get great feedback and encouragement from my supervisors. So either I'm not really that good and they're just being nice, or something is making it difficult for me to get into positions of interest. There are several "in-groups" here in which enjoy preference not only with opportunities for career advancement, but also for involvement with activities which help prepare for those career advancement opportunities. This has become worse with time. Acquisitions have exacerbated this as well. Besides career advancement, many feel their overall technical abilities get duller with time at HC. I certainly feel less technically capable overall after years of working here and focusing on specific types of work with proprietary tools, and have talked with many coworkers who have experienced the same. HC does encourage personal development in word and with meaningful reimbursement benefits, but in practice that becomes very difficult to juggle work/life/family/etc. In fairness to HC that is not a challenge unique to working here, but somehow I've never found is as difficult to manage as I have here.
Timeless Principles selectively applied. HC culture is informed heavily by certain "Timeless Principles" which guide the company ethos. This is a good thing. The principles are good; things like pragmatism, respect, accountability, understanding, caring, assuming positive intent, and more. Where these principles are applied well, they improve the culture at HC. Where they're applied poorly, as they sometimes are at HC, they degrade the culture. Like almost everywhere in today's world, things are getting more tribal with time at HC. Some tribes are given preferential treatment in comparison to others. Some "Timeless Principles" are applied for certain tribes while being applied against others. We've become increasingly selective about the application of our Timeless Principles, making them not so timeless after all. A strange form of moralism has emerged here in which otherwise intolerable behavior is tolerated and even encouraged as a means to desired ends. This is often done with good intentions, usually in the name of equality. If equality is the goal, equality should be the practice, but in some areas of selective application it is neither. On rare occasions the poor application of our Timeless Principles is called out but is usually met with a doubling down on the behavior and a re-statement of the "Timeless Principles" themselves as justification. It is getting much less enjoyable to participate in parts of the culture here, and in ways makes this workplace feel more and more a like a social media platform or some other aggravating influence that you just want to turn off.
