I joined as a middle manager in Product and Engineering in the fall of 2024. I was given 2 teams to manage and a mandate to improve delivery of our Salesforce products. By November I presented options for how to make improvements while adding continuous integration and delivery tooling that to this day is largely missing.
I was told “no, focus on delivery of features”.
Delivery of features was always a priority for me, so I decided to focus in on my teams and giving them everything they needed and protecting their time. I learned that senior leadership would routinely call hours-long meetings with my team without my knowledge, distracting them from their work. I put a stop to that (or at least I tried; it lasted about a week), and in doing so, put the first nail in my coffin.
Senior leadership would regularly ask IC’s on my team for updates on individual tickets in Jira, completely ignoring any chain of command. They would apply such pressure that it led an individual on my team to have somewhat of a mental breakdown. I gave him the week off (making use of that sweet sweet “unlimited PTO”), I stood up for him to leadership and I was fired 2 days later.
Curtis Brewer is the very worst, most toxic CEO I’ve ever seen in action. He would regularly make jabs at people for perceived failures, or engage in outright gossip trying to bait another lower level manager into a confrontation.
