Backend system is broken. Everyone knows this, yet they are amazingly indecisive on owning it vs maintenance. Onboarding process is nothing like the job itself.
Nepotism is obvious and kinda unique. New hires are management referrals all the time. You have people who know each other for a long time making decisions for the company at the expense of others and benefit of themselves.
Retention rate is embarrassing. Everyone who isn't on the inner circle will leave after their options are vested - and this vacuum is filled internally most of the time.
Product is kneecapped in its growth. Best they can get is Tinder's sloppy seconds. This is also why they are the most isolated child of Match Group and a complete afterthought that isn't a huge cost center but won't ever be a big profit center either.
Managers care about themselves. They can be replaced by a bot, as they lack empathy, mentorship and decision making skills, and just carry out "business". Actually there are no managers, they're a senior engineer/manager hybrid like Apple but that doesn't really work in this company setup, since the managers have mostly been given the position instead of earning it.
Innovation is discouraged since leadership is unable to make pivotal decisions on the engineering direction. By solving a few engineering challenges the company can generate huge momentum to grow dimensionally, but every engineering problem that gets resources allocated is to meet a marketing deadline
Pair programming and collaboration between engineers has a high cost to it: your manager will know that you couldn't finish something on your own, and it's a negative point against you.
Public Slack channels are basically silent and only used to gloat. It's best to limit your opinions and communication to private messages with folks you predict are trustable, otherwise be aware that public messages are all being monitored carefully by whomever you report to. This is a great tool to paint you as the escapegoat, to hide the larger more difficult issues behind the very pointed and public blame put on you
Engineering isn't a very friendly environment. You're not a person, you're another cog in the machine, do as you're told and make the right people happy to earn a promotion or be square.
