- No chance for professional growth: There isn't a clear path for career development nor help from anyone in the company.
- Lack of leadership: There are people in higher management that share many words and very little meaning or vision.
- Deaf ears to suggestions: There is this aspect of working as Scribd where new people in higher management offer an idea and you explained how that was tried and why it failed and they would move forward with the idea regardless with an air of: "it failed before because it wasn't me who tried" leading to rehashing of failures leading exactly to the same outcomes it did before.
In the engineering side, when they came up with a decision and you explained to them why this was not a good idea you were regarded as someone who's not a team player.
- Actively complaining about management has become part of the culture at Scribd to the point that most people still there are there out of inertia because interviewing if just a pain in the neck.
- More bureaucracy that is warranted for a company this size with very little agency for ICs.
- Constants layoffs being labelled as "reorgs". The phrases "be careful or you'll get reorg'd" and "I don't want to be reorg'd" are now common place with anyone you speak to. According to leadership, the company has not had any round of layoffs and that's because they've labelled it a different name.
- The previous CTO was useless as were the people who he brought in and got paid to not do anything at all. Only one of them remains and everyone wonders what value he brings to the company.