The culture when I started versus the culture when I left is a 180. The micromanaging by the highest levels at the company is outrageous. There are too many cooks in the kitchen all the time with constantly changing deadlines, unclear expectations, and no meaningful requirements for projects. Upper management has 0 idea how software development actually worked and that it isn't instantaneous. The company did massive dev during covid and a few other projects and that seemingly gave them the idea that it was the new standard to have people working 70 hour weeks and doing daily hotfixes and working until 3 AM or be woken up at 3 AM by phone calls to get on and fix something. This new ideal is unsustainable and has burned out so many people. With the return to office, they completely disregarded any concerns and then fired dozens of people without the TLs or supervisors knowledge until the employees called their leaders to tell them what happened. a leader should NEVER be called by their employee telling them they were fired and the leader had no idea it was coming. Projects are rushed then put on hold. Then 5 months later people are screamed at asking how it's not complete but they were told priorities were something else. Everything changes on a dime. The focus is new flashy development while there are long time clients complaining of issues for years that would be great enhancements and help solve many problems but they are put on the back burner because they aren't making the company as much money. The culture of fear is rampant. People are pressured to review highly and if they don't, the concerns they have and share are never even acknowledged, let alone fixed. For multiple months everyone was looking over their shoulder waiting to be fired. 60+ people have left in QA in the last 3 months and nearly a dozen of them are leaders with great institutional knowledge. It's quite sad to see what a small group of money and power hungry individuals can do to a once great company, and how little they value the people that make their wealth and success possible. With such a concern for their ratings and reputation, it's shocking that nothing has actually been done to fix the reason those things have tanked.
