* Lack of direction – company spends weeks planning a quarter, just to change plans all the way mid-quarter. Very reactive to market shifts – they turn where the wind blows, and often the wind changes direction weekly. They pretend they’re market leaders, but all they do is follow the market.
* Lack of regard for quality – speed is the name of the game. Most core systems were built by 3 engineers intended to support a handful of accounts and don’t scale in any way. Every time someone suggests they need to be rewritten, someone from “above” weighs out how long that’ll take vs what else new we can throw on the house of cards, and often senior leadership pushes for new features rather than fixing the problems with the foundation. As a result, most people are in a constant state of "firefighting". Textbook example of sacrificing long-term well-being for short term benefits as an anti-pattern.
* Lack of ownership by teams – because teams don’t exist. Senior leadership demands team reshuffles to meet last minute pivots, so no two people have spent working on the same team for more than 3 months. A ton of products are orphaned and their support resembles a game of hot potato. I had to support systems I knew nothing about because I happened to know more about them than anyone else (everyone else had left).
* Lack of transparency – senior leadership (founders, heads of departments) have best intentions at heart, but they’re terrible at communicating a vision (or, they don’t have one). Every decision feels like a knee-jerk reaction. Time and time again, they reflect on problems, promise they won’t happen again, and they keep repeating the same mistakes.
* Feels like a pyramid scheme at times – doing everything possible to grow, even if that’s completely unsustainable.
* Culture – it’s good on the surface, they make you feel like you’re part of the family, etc. But questioning lack of direction publicly will not make you a popular person. Also, when the going gets tough, you get kicked to the curb, which is possibly the right thing to do from the business perspective, but definitely doesn’t make you feel appreciated.
