Toxic combative team members. Questionable career growth. Weak ineffective management - Software Engineer II Cox Automotive Employee Review

Often I would see Cockroaches in the bathrooms, and not just small German roaches but also the giant sized roaches. Sometimes even at the front of the building you'd see the German roaches crawling around Base salary was low by Austin, TX standards, but dev management has the audacity to chastise you because your salary in your given role is too high. Seems like organization also has an unspoken rule that you have to be at certain levels for your role within a given timeframe of your career at this organization. Otherwise they will let you go. Dev Management for our team/project was pretty weak and ineffective. They didn't really have much to offer in terms of useful feedback/guidance. You'd often get feedback that was misinformed (i.e. from having incorrect facts). It was clear the dev management on this project were out of touch with the craft of being a dev, or perhaps they never were much of a devs to begin with as they didn't seem to register mentally/appreciate any of the technologies/methodologies we were working with and modern methodologies we were trying to promote. Not to mention the lack of appreciation for the skills and accomplishments that the devs on the team were bringing to the project. I believe the dev management on this project were more like sports guys in school that ended up settling for being devs when their athletic career weren't going to take off. I think this organization in general tends to like to hire people like this for manager/director type roles, i.e. Type A style personalities that aren't necessarily passionate about the art/craft of being a dev or the industry they are in but more about being obsessed with competing and winning at all costs, even to the detriment and well being of the people that work under them (i.e. cracking the whip on their cogs). Dev Management on our project was also pretty negligent and it's clear they had no deep interest (at a craft/dev level) in what any of the devs under them were doing with the exception of the dev leads, and that was only because the leads had to be at all the important meetings with regards to the product development and could make management look good. But consequently due to our dev managements lack of technical insight/interest, they basically would give the dev leads all the credit for the dev work that was done to get this product up and running. This was evident when you had dev management pulling aside the devs on the team to chastise for them not pulling their weight as compared to the leads, which was often far from the truth. But that just goes to show how often misinformed dev management's assessments were. The end result is a lot of hard work being put in by devs and pretty much going unrecognized. It didn't matter if you were an engaged dev who was proactive, actively evangelizing modern dev practices that even the organization itself was promoting, doing extra projects on the side to help the team, or if you were active in various other groups/sigs within the organization, the dev management on this project just didn't see it or care (unless you were a dev lead that directly benefited management's agenda at the moment). Dev Management was also passively promoting toxic cultural habits (i.e. pitting devs up against each other, rewarding people for working long hours and weekends, etc...). Whether this was intentional or not is hard to say because dev managements words on this project often didn't match their actions. In the end, dev management on this project was just more the same status quo management in this organization, i.e. great at managing up to their superiors and progressing their own careers. But not really having much to offer the people that work under them. This is not too dissimilar to the overall stock of managers in the organization The organization itself is highly bureaucratic with a very forceful and authoritative Nature. Scrum Management asserts their authority during daily stand ups and micromanage every piece of work you do. And it's clear they don't usually understand what they are cracking the whip on as they just blindly read off the headlines of user story cards on our boards. They are super authoritative because their bosses are also cracking the whip on them. So it basically just goes back to that cut-throat and competition based culture, i.e. step on and bully whoever you need to in order to make sure you are personally successful. Our scrum management generally would never respond to you if you slacked them some questions to try to stay on top of things, but they wouldn't hesitate to call you out during standups, or crack the whip on you after standup if you were doing something they didn't like and messing with their agendas. What made this situation especially frustrating was the fact that our project in general was basically being planned ad-hoc and the unacceptable excuse we got from management for poor planning of the project was "well we're a startup". For the record there is nothing "startup" about this organization. Basically what resulted from this project was a combination of some of the worst things you could have in a company/project; i.e. an authoritative "whip cracking" management promoting poor/ad-hoc planning practices, and then chastising the team when said ad-hoc/poorly-planned work wasn't getting done during sprint iterations. But if you called them out for poorly planning things, then out came the "Oh well that's just the way things are because we are a startup" excuse. The nature of this project was basically centered around toxic work culture practices: don't plan and work ad-hoc, work weekends and long hours and do whatever it takes to get all the work done in spite of things being poorly planned. Devs on this project are not given the right set of opportunities. For example, the management enforces days and days of meetings, of which are generally only attended by dev leads as far as dev representation. And as mentioned above, dev managers (whether they just aren't interested, or just too overwhelmed themselves) will essentially just neglect the low level devs because they only see the dev leads. And so the dev leads are generally the ones that are the heroes in the dev managers eyes and will get the credit/promotions/accolades In general there are just too many managers and not enough people doing the work. It's humorous how there would be days coincidentally where several devs were out at the same time during stand ups (i.e. they were out running personal errands, sick, etc...) and it's funny to notice during those times how many people in that standup were managers/non-contributors. This I would say was a common problem at the organization level I mentioned the combative/adversarial team culture rather than collaborative culture. Sadly this project was such that there was also combative/adversarial relations amongst the devs themselves. It appears that some of these devs sadly also had a lot of toxic practices. Some of these devs on our team habitually worked long hours (i.e. often to about 3-5 am in the morning), worked weekends, and on top of this they would gloat about this during standups like it was a badge of honor or as if they were trying to gain favor. Most of the time their reasons for working weekends and long hours were questionable (i.e. due to just poor planning/time-management, or lack of focus on things that mattered). We had some devs that were always trying to be very dominating/authoritative on all things software dev related and it was clear they would take their personal preferences/opinions and pass them around like they were facts and absolute truths on how to build software. They would often block and gate code PRs from the other devs until you submitted to their personal preferences and opinions on how to build things. Their comments/feedback on PRs usually either ranged from hostile comments (e.g. "doing it this is way is pointless"), to very non-helpful (e.g. "I don't like this"). Some of the devs would throw temper tantrums during meetings/group-discussions whenever something wasn't to their liking, and/or often make hostile comments ( "omg, do I have to do everything around here?!!") We'd often have SME non-contributors that would also randomly chime in on Code PRs and also block/gate PRs. Thus also creating a "too many cooks in the kitchen culture" This team/project had a culture of some dev leads, much like the dev management, that were also pretty negligent. Dev leads getting a lot of facts/perceptions mixed up about teammates. Dev Leads often missing stand ups, and not evening knowing what their teammates were working on, and things were getting planned ad-hoc. We had dev leads often resorting to ad-hoc/abrasive tactics, i.e. dev leads often just randomly ad-hoc phone calling people without giving any notice, to have important meetings, see what people were working on (because they were missing standups), chastise, etc... Sometimes if you were lucky your interactions with the dev leads on this project would start off as a single line ambiguous slack message from them (e.g. "hey", "hey ya got a sec?", "hey are you there?", etc...) and then out came out the abrupt phone calls. But more often than not, some dev leads here on this project thrived on catching people off guard and interacting with you basically whenever it was convenient for them (i.e. your interactions with some of these dev leads were whenever it was to their advantage, and when they could catch you off guard in order to have the high ground on you to better control, command, and dominate the conversations). In summary this project and team was promoting a Toxic culture, pushing out a lot passionate/engaged developers, and being negligent to developer happiness. In the end the only people that appeared to be climbing the ladder in this project were the people promoting toxic culture My Advice is if nothing better is available, working at this organization as a dev is a great place to level up your resume and keep your tech skills up to date until you can find something better and more fulfilling career-wise. That is, unless you happen to resonate on the same wavelength as the "whip cracking" management in this organization then you will be successful, much to the chagrin of other people in the company.