Pros
Solid peer to peer relationships among engineers
Cons
Title inflation is a systemic issue here. Director titles are frequently handed out without requiring the proper qualifications or reflecting an actual increase in leadership responsibility. This has created an unqualified leadership layer that severely bottlenecks decision making and hurts work efficiency. For example there is an internal joke about “ping pong team” and unfortunately, it reflected a real issue within the department. Socializing and spending time around the ping pong table often seemed to carry more weight than delivering technical work. The question is how can “ping pong” in Masimo make you a Director very fast? basically you should become widely known across the company not for your technical leadership or meaningful contributions but for a difficult attitude, disrespect toward others, inconsistent office presence, and operating under a different set of rules than the rest of the department. Unfortunately none of this is hidden and employees openly talk about it, and struggled with the same concerns for years, and if complaints are raised to HR, yet nothing will change because you have someone you know protecting you. I still remember during a year when many high performing engineers were told promotions were frozen and then you wake up in the morning and find out that someone randomly with the above attitude was promoted to Director. Watching engineers who consistently delivered and worked long hours go unrecognized while someone appeared to benefit from favoritism was deeply discouraging. leadership’s unwillingness to address the situation significantly damaged morale. Conversations shifted away from engineering growth and career development and toward sarcasm and jokes about whether employees should spend less time working and more time playing ping pong.
