The engineering organization is dysfunctional at a structural level. An architecture team mandates specific implementations without owning the consequences of those decisions. Engineers are expected to execute directives without questioning the reasoning, and asking technical questions is interpreted as defiance rather than due diligence. There is no documentation explaining why decisions are made, yet engineers are held accountable for not following undocumented standards.
The company has invested years into a major modernization effort with very little to show for it in production. Instead of iterating and delivering incrementally, teams are forced to build enterprise-grade solutions from day one for a product with essentially zero production usage. The organization claims to be agile but operates as waterfall. Tech debt is accumulating on brand-new systems that haven't even shipped yet.
Senior engineers are undervalued and sidelined. After a reorganization, experienced engineers were quietly stripped of decision-making authority while keeping their titles. The performance review process punishes engineers for navigating unclear expectations -- you can deliver strong technical work all year and still receive a poor rating based on interaction with an architecture team that refuses to communicate. Multiple senior engineers left for the same reasons.
Feedback goes into a void. Leadership presents itself as open to input, but nothing changes. The same problems persist year after year.
