The first thing that sticks out is the lack of engineering culture and maturity in the processes, resulting in hectic, low quality output and friction at the review stage.
The top-down approach, forgotten in modern technology, is very popular in the company, when a decision is made by a narrow circle of people, such as an architectural committee or a single principal engineer, and passed to the team for execution. In fact, the role of developers is reduced to that of a soldier silently following orders. Showing ownership of the product and constructive criticism of the decision passed on to you will be considered as unwillingness to cooperate and will be reflected in your performance review, despite the fact that the human department promotes this behavior as a key element of the company's DNA.
Micromanagement is thriving. From design to minor core reviews, it's everywhere. People on the leadership team either do not trust employees, are unable to finally move to the leadership team and delegate decision-making to teams or just prefer to use an authoritarian approach to speed up the delivery.
To some extent, all of the above is due to the fact that the company has a culture of hustle and overwork. Decisions are made in a rush, and deadlines set by top management do not allow for adequate planning of development without crunches. When you open your laptop in the evening, you can see your colleagues committing code, creating pull requests and chatting about work-related topics. Overworking is socially approved and some of your colleagues may look askance at those who refuse to voluntarily overwork, while the CEO of the company proudly proclaims that working overtime is part of the culture and overworking employees are great and the hope of this company.
A few new red flags in the company's culture and organization:
- During my time with the company, the engineering manager position was eliminated; the product owner is now responsible for performance reviews. Your personal development is the responsibility of the competency coach, who was probably your engineering manager before, but goals approval, payment for any course or book purchase is still on the product owner. So now you have to align your development plan with two people, one of whom may not be competent or interested in your development.
- For some time now, the company has decided to introduce a completely opaque comparative performance assessment, which involves normalizing your performance to the company average. So, even if you have completed all goals for the period and your performance is at or above what is expected for a particular position, your score may still be lower due to another team from a completely different group who was working 60-80 hours a week.
