- Hidden beneath the veneer of optimism as a core value, there is often a serious devotion to willfully ignoring the unpleasant realities and contentious situations that arise in any fast-growing client agency in survey after survey. I've personally been gaslight several times and told a problem I was escalating didn't actually exist
- Management talks the talk but doesn’t always walk the walk. It's left to the project teams to insulate themselves from the pressures of clients as best they can and create truly great team dynamics of collaboration and open feedback (which quite frequently they do!)
- WillowTree never says no to a client in pursuit of the bottom line, even when the client company's core value set is in direct contradiction to our own, in extreme cases even going as far as silencing opposition within to sweep the issue under the rug
- For all the focus on diversity and inclusion, there is very little representation at the VP/C-Suite for minorities and some leaders even go as far as to deride trainings in support of these initiatives behind closed doors as a waste of time, which is really disheartening to hear from the top
- Company leadership openly acknowledges behind closed doors that they can't/won't compete on salary, especially as the market has opened up to remote work during Covid. However, when asked publicly about competitive market pay they will almost always baulk and say their comp bands are based on market rates and research. I've yet to be able to compare notes to understand what research is being used that is so different from my own.
- Advocating for your career advancement is fruitless. It doesn't matter how meticulously you work against your goals, the rubric will change until your manager arbitrarily decides you're ready for a promotion, as long as you don't ask about it and the company has the budget for retention instead of recruitment at the end of the year.
- Salary/compensation negotiation is completely out of the question and can actually harm your career advancement as its taboo to ask
- Internal surveys have long pointed out that career satisfaction is highest for the two bookends of new hires and senior leadership, with a huge drop in decision making power and ownership for anyone in the 3-6 year mid-range. I believe this is due to the enormous demands placed on mid-level contributors on the cusp of management/leadership who simply lack the voice to make decisions appropriate to their tenure and experience and certainly lack the compensation package to recognize their contribution
- In spite of years of internal surveys and feedback on all the above this has remained true year after year and points toward a systemic issue that leadership simply can't or won't address
- For these reasons many senior engineers, designers, PMs and etc have long since left and continue to leave for greener pastures, often leaving behind extremely young, inexperienced (albeit talented) employees to have to step up beyond what would otherwise be expected of them. Projects succeed in spite of this not because of it, and it's often due to extraordinary, herculean efforts by teams that usually leave people burnt out before moving on to the next project
- While there are still remnants of the innovative start-up company that emerged with the launch of the app store, it's been years since there was real engineering leadership & representation at the C-Suite level. As a result, commercial interests dominate the balance between engineering and business development in often detrimental ways
