- Promotion depends on whether you are a threat to someone. Those technically strong and ambitious are rejected because what they have done is not “perfect”.
- Some managers who got promoted quickly are interested in promoting people within the same inner-circle or hiring direct-reports from outside to make their own position solid. As to the product development, who cares.
- Engineering teams are organized based on politics instead of product need. Several critical cross-team projects are not funded and treated as hackathon
- The actual hackathon is for new hires to entertain. Old timers know that it is a joke. There is no support to make anything into production. You get $50 for your passion. That’s it.
- Amazing amount of politics. CTO was out without any explanation. You can see him frequently in office looking lonely and depressed. Sadly he is the most visionary person about the product
- One of the engineer team dismantled. It is funny that the last member was offered amazing amount of salary before he went on. Why he still left?
- Because you need to pay a fortune in cash to buy your stock option if you leave. The longer you stay the more option you deserve. The more cash you have to pay to buy it. The more difficult to leave. Thus the more depressed you would be.
- As a mobile company, the UX team has hardly any influence. Major UX redesigns/refresh are rejected. UX leads are all gone. Those designers who stayed, you can hardly hear their voice
- Many people are generally negative towards new technologies if they are not familiar with. They will criticize it harshly for its limitation without offering any help to the problem that it can solve
- Some other people are more interested in new technology than practicability. With an extra layer to maintain, it does not matter to them how frequent we will have prod problems
- Some managers micro-manage engineers even if what they know is a couple of years old. They will not promoted you so they can always out-rank you
- There are teams without much contribution, but running strong
- Slow, feature development is slow. Nobody cares
- There are a few amazing people really care, responsible, professional. They are doing their work no matter being ignored or micro-managed. There is hope, if these people stay
- In general, very few people care about competitors. We are happy all the time no matter how slow we are. Nobody cares how fast our competitors are pushing out features or exploring new areas.
- Some team managers are ignorant of team members. Design meetings are for managers only. Tech leads know nothing. Managers get all exposure. Junior engineers have no chance to grow. In fact, if you are too junior, they are not going to give you an opportunity to grow or learn.
- The immigration lawyer firm is horrible. They humiliated more than one female applicants by asking them to marry for green card instead of apply through employer. Haven’t heard anybody able to move forward with their green card application. Don’t dream of it.
