- the culture is tyrannical, from concept through execution, all ideas come from the top. every single detail for all 700 employees, whether it be a slight scheduling change, a minor UI change, marketing copy, or even internal communications -- all of these require approval from Tony (the CEO)
- the tops down culture has transformed us into a slow moving sloth of a company that demotivates an extremely smart and (once) tenacious team. there's a huge opportunity in front of us, but we will miss it if we cannot right this ship soon with systemic changes.
- every step of progress requires pitching to Tony in the form of keynote decks (yes, that's not a typo... even though Google bought us, we still use keynote to communicate literally everything). There's a running joke around the company that we're the most overqualified group of keynote deck builders in the world. If you want to go somewhere to SHIP products instead of making slides, this is not the place for you. But be warned, before you can present your ideas to Tony, be ready to do multiple dry-runs with your team before the "big show." Watch your spirits crumble as your ideas are replaced by your team's suggestions to manipulate the conversation in their favor - "Tony won't like that, change it to this" or "give Tony some choices, so he feels like it was his idea." Instead of innovation, we spend countless hours thinking of ways to get Tony to sign off on an idea.
- once an idea has Tony's approval, we stick with it no matter what, because going back and changing it would require countless more hours of even more keynote decks, more dry runs with your team to prep for the Tony meeting, followed by the actual Tony meeting - which may or not go in your favor. If that doesn't sound like fun, then just stick with the old idea. It may not be great, but it's approved. Sound like innovation? If so, then sign up now... you're going to love it.
- because everything relies on Tony's approval many of the more savvy vets will tell you that Tony said X even when he didn't. This can be an effective way to get less savvy newbies to abandon ideas that could threaten the status-quo. some vets realize that rocking the boat could jeopardize their power, so this is a very effective way to thwart those pesky little upstarts that actually want to change things.
- we're still leveraging archaic software methodologies from last century (read: waterfall). in some cases we claim to be "doing agile" but dividing work into sprints and then doing long and arduous stand-ups does not agile make. When all ideas come from the top and teams are not empowered to change ideas during the implementation phase, so it's waterfall with lipstick.
