The root of most of the problems in this company is the CEO. The entire C level team around him has changed multiple times over the past few years. The only common nominator is him.
The CEO is a great salesman, but a horrible leader. He says stuff in the manner of "Do it my way or get out". And lower level management is starting to also implement this attitude.
Salary raises are laughable in this company. Leadership does as much as possible to avoid you getting promoted and when you do manage to get promoted the raise is around the same percentage as you can get without a promotion.
The biggest contributor to the bonus you get is a rating your manager gives you. And there is a culture of someone in the team has to get a bad grade. Imagine working your heart out the entire year, doing really well and you still get a bad bonus and salary raise because your team was also a little bit better.
There is an overabundance of "senior" leadership. There are so many managers it's pretty comparable to the amount of engineers. The CHRO told us how much money they are paying overall across the company on salaries yearly, which over the number of employees averages out to a pretty good number. Except it's not even close to what the engineers earn who build the services that make the money. They are wasting an extreme amount of money on "senior" management who get nothing done. And one of the operating principles is "Run lean".
I saw a review in Glassdoor from a Director who said "Great work life balance". They force you to the office, they check your attendance and I distinctly remember them talking about "Checkout comes first" in one of the all employee meetings.
Currently office is 3 days a week. If you don't go you have to request an absence from the office like you would request a sick day. Management has zero trust in their employees to get work done from home. Don't expect the mandatory office days to stay on 3.
People keep leaving the company and it's pretty obvious they have a hard time recruiting new people. My team is looking for 3 engineers and we are struggling even to find one.
The "stock" package you get in this company is also a spit in your face. I didn't even accept mine since it was worthless and I don't expect to be around long enough to cash it out. And cashing it out is not guaranteed.
In the past several years there have been multiple reorganizations of the entire company. All the senior management does is move people around like chess pieces, make branding changes where they change the variations of branding colours slightly and then think they did great work.
They say they want "talk straight" and honest feedback. Yet when you actually give any critical feedback they argue with you and change nothing. Again I've seen people mention in these reviews that management is open to feedback. They are only open to positive feedback.
This company is a vanity project for the CEO to be a part of the billionaires boy club.
