I wanted to give myself some time to write a thoughtful response to my experience while at NETGEAR. Well, the time has passed and I still feel all of the strong themes mentioned here hold weight in my decision to exit stage left.
My experience was sitting in a meeting and feeling like the smartest person in the room. Not good. The leadership felt like they were making things up as they went and most of the ideas produced were just throwing spaghetti at the wall and then scrambling to make it right when something went sideways. A total mess. Most employees were overwhelmed because they frankly had too much to do. Teams run very lean and most people are expected to do the work of 2-3 people. While this was a great experience to know what I didn't want in my next role, it proved to be a stressful experience for me and those around me. Not a ton of process, deadlines were non-existent and went more like "OMG we forgot to do X, EVERYONE SPRINT", really messy. I was underutilized and it felt like the person I reported into was keeping down rather than pulling me up. Not great leadership and definitely not a place to get that valuable mentorship from a senior employee. (1) there wasn't the time and (2) the department I was in didn't have a program in place. NETGEAR felt like the stepping for leadership folks that were on the connector train to their next lily pad. It became very clear that there wasn't a lot of thought or time put into retaining people or asking employees what they wanted out of X role or X project they were tasked to focus on. Absolutely no time to enjoy with your fellow employees at work and leaving your desk riddled you with guilt. Not a lot of MBA folks or the like so going back to school leaves peoples faces scrunched up and passive aggressive when you mention you can't take a 5PM meeting because you have to head to class that evening. They didn't get it. Over time, I received less and less support to further my education because it was perceived that if I wasn't at my desk for the last 30 minutes of a work day, I wasn't doing my job. Very disappointing.
Would not recommend.
