Positive mission commitment but engineering culture is faltering
Pros
Nice office location and the clinical side of the company still seems very committed to the mission of the org
Cons
The engineering culture is tanking and leadership knows it. We're losing engineers with combined decades of experience due to an archaic in-office requirement policy and the company has spent >$20m on AI tools while complaining about our token usage. It's a not-so-well kept secret that athena is positioning itself to IPO with all the emphasis on "10x everything" while teams are short-staffed with no plans to hire or backfill in the near future. In a recent all-hands, an engineer was asked what the company is doing to support people to prevent burnout and the entire question was not only dismissed but the CTO said he's been around for 30 years and people just need to work hard and work more. We understand we're a cog in the machine and I get that he's saying the quiet part outloud. Maybe it's a good thing he didn't give a PR answer because it has people talking!