Incompetent and irresponsible:
Eng dept leadership piled the infrastructure foundation with no architecture, which can only last few years with zero to minor changes, they promoted themselves to top in the last 3 years, but leaving eng dept unsustainable dead end now.
Principle engs set up a job auto "git reset --hard" cloudfront repo's dev branch overwriting ALL TEAMs' change! Comparing cloudfront repo's qa and prod branches, both history and contents are greatly diverted, testing in qa is meaningless!! YES!! This means they don't even know branching/merging works! and it's there for years! This dead envidence of an OPS DEV instead of "devops".
Take "cdk-framework" repo and all its usage repos for example, they looks like code projects, but only actually are used as scripts and deployed in multiple production environments, no design, no doc, not upgradable for years ...
This "eng leadership" is an ops stronghold, with no SDLC concept/mindset/skillset, focus on forcing developers to put up with rigid restrictions, tedious process, inconsistent environments, results are 1) no long term planning, NO practical roadmap 2) unfinished, half cooked projects/deployments all over everywhere ... 3) hire more of themselves producing more of it ...
Plus bureaucratic and manipulative:
Force ALL TEAMs to use a manually configured Vault which is in a mess, causing tons of breakdowns, security incidents(kept secrets internally).
Force ALL TEAMs to use in house lib based on AWS CDK, called "cdk-framework" which is using Typescript as Shell script, making it unable to upgrade at all for years!
Force ALL TEAMs TO use centralized container image repo, and repeatedly deleted container images in production "by accident".
They close their tickets with one words "done", meaning they are keeping details to self.
They DARE NOT give opinions in writing so that they won't be hold responsible, very few puts design in wiki and rarely anyone finish it, there are good things in wiki, but the writers all left ...
Slack is a place to show off/a33 kissing, no practical discussion at all.
...
Fixing existing crap will take more than re-creating from scratch, minimum 5 years, either way.
"You have to do as told even it's wrong!!!" The eng dept is like CCCP/North Korea's strict the bureaucratic hierachy.
Everyone's slack name is marked by title, there is no way to change because Kim's authority is based on the piled up crap, they are scared of being questioned, ends up that engs have to pretend use/do as told but actually NOT in the code at all.
Inevitable toxic env, power struggle hole:
Incompetent/unwilling to solve problem, they try anything everything to suppress negative words, calling "no blaming" culture but actually are taking sides, ganging up ... you have to be one of them and promoting the crap, at least fake it ...
Ends up dishonest and immoral:
Anyone not going along fake positive, will be marked as poor performance with no details/explanation/warning.
irresponsible, even delete slack msgs to blame others, hide wiki pages ....
Based on above, they want to raise the bars, which inevitably become a "Great Purge", good ones either left or silenced.
There is nothing good to learn in this eng dept, young people should absolutely stay away.