This organization, while I was there, was struggling to find their way in a digital world. Their chief digital officer had begun to assemble a team to lead their digital technology efforts which involved eReading and digital experiences like their website, digital research, etc. These teams were, as I came to learn, dealing with a lot of legacy systems and technical debt, and the leadership I reported into at the time was extremely toxic, petty, and overall, simply cruel. It became clear to me after several months that the person in charge of hiring software engineering talent before I joined (my supervisor) wasn't interested in dealing with their software engineers anymore. After a few months, I'd find myself in meetings with senior director level employees, including this person, where they would routinely call out other, lower level employees by name to gossip about them, and there was almost no focus on any kind of strategic objective for the department other than vague "stability" concerns about their existing software. There were recurring "sprint review" meetings set up, but they were actually just status update meetings for the directors in disguise. I was also told several times that more than one employee that I ended up managing likely needed to go on a performance improvement plan, but I saw no such evidence of this once I started working with these people individually - more likely, they were simply never spoken to like they were human beings or given a chance to excel in their roles. The direction I did receive, when I got any at all, was to put together technical "roadmaps" for the digital team, but without any OKRs or cadence based planning at the organizational level this became an exercise in futility where what no matter what I produced, it was nitpicked to the point of being useless. When I tried to assert any kind of view that I thought could help out the digital organization such as a heavier emphasis on agile and lean planning principles, I was told to basically shut up and only focus on "technical" things. I sincerely wish the NYPL the best and I hope things have changed since I left. I would not recommend working there if you're in a technical role.
