No leadership, poor pay, and zero accountability from leadership.
Pros
Some of the best developers and team mates in the industry. Sharp, competent designers that get to the root of issues and create amazing workflows that add value and efficiency to a user's experience. Some project leadership was amazing to work with, organized, and had a clear vision for the project.
Cons
COO Tom Meccia is an Orwellian doublespeaker. He will do anything to build you up before knocking you down, such as "I value and recognize the good work you do" and then take it back with the next sentence with "we're giving you a 3% raise" despite that being less than half of inflation. He also doesn't believe published sources for the inflation rate, and will tell you that you can't believe in everything you read if you bring it up. He'll let you know that the door is always open and he welcomes feedback, and then becomes verbally abusive when you approach him and speak your mind. His management style is to not get involved until he needs to find a scapegoat, and god forbid you're in his thoughts when things go south. The teams have seen him lose his temper for doing exactly what he said, so employees beware. Project leadership is weak and ineffectual. In a company whose focus is making software, there is a noticeable lack of software experience in project leadership. I was a tester and took on many non-testing responsibilities such as requirements decomposition, getting daily status from development teams, and being the scrum master for every agile ceremony because project leadership was incapable of performing these tasks. Even after being shown step-by-step how to do certain things like writing down requirements or after taking a specialized course in Agile development, the basics such as writing a user story or grooming a backlog were insurmountable tasks for project leadership. Corporate leadership wouldn't dare risk the ego of the product owner and have these as required capabilities, however, and are always willing for someone else to pick up managerial deadweight. There's a breakdown of communication from the C-level suite down to project management then onto the development teams. Even though the company has been remote for nearly two years, people have somehow not adapted or been trained in communicating electronically. Management does not like to write anything down and clearly communicate it. Project leadership makes decisions with only a few people present and operate like they're in a glass room in the center of an office with every employee listening in. It comes as no surprise that this leads to a colossal waste of government money.
