Toxic Work Environment:
I can’t speak to every other manager in the company but my manager seemed exhausted, overworked and stressed about the job and meeting his quarterly goals. Whenever the team wanted to make a minor modification that would make the product experience slightly better to the audience, the team was discouraged and we had to write a “document” on why this change needed to be made, send for approval, discuss it over a 30 minute meeting and 2 hour slack discussion, before rolling back the changes that have already been made; while engineering spent a day on fixing the issue, others had to spend more than two days on explaining why that change needed to be done and was given a lecture on why that was the wrong decision like every other decision that was made over the last couple of months.
Work life balance:
Heavily depends on the manager. When a teammate mentioned to their manager during 1-1s that working during the day and managing a remote team during the nights is challenging, the manager suggested that if you are not willing to put in 12-14 hours per day, the company is not a good fit.
Managers expect you to get their approval on every minute decision that needs to be made; while micromanagement is not their preferred strategy, they will use it on a daily basis to make your life a living hell and create a toxic environment for the team.
Negative Feedback:
My manager was exceptionally good at trashing my work on a weekly/daily basis, while being politically correct and logical; If everyone did things right the first time, why is conversion super low and several users never come back to the site for a second time? Why is Realself not Yelp or facebook or a product that witnessed success on a similar scale? Giving feedback and encouraging changes is one thing but trashing your direct report’s work on a daily basis and expressing frustration shows lack of leadership, & empathy
Other Cons:
New direction or new metric to chase every quarter, leaving the team confused
Managers on some teams fail to create a safe place for their team to do their best work; the focus is too narrow to the extent that the overall product and user experience suffers
Company fires people or employees leave the company and this pattern has accelerated over the last few months; several factors are at play here. Several good engineers have left the company recently.
Letting go of employees who are not a good match is one thing while firing 15% of your workforce in a matter of a couple of months is entirely different.
Think twice before you accept an offer.
