Pros
- Great engineering management and leadership in Store Technology. It's rare that you have buy-in from the engineers all the way up to senior leadership, but it was clear to us that we were aligned on the same goals. - Great senior/principal level engineers in general. There was a lot of domain expertise as these people were usually promoted from within the org's product teams. As such, the product-focused culture we had was kept strong by these IC's, which I really believe drove the success of various store-focused initiatives. - Investment in pretty solid enterprise-level tech, and a lot of freedom to choose how it was used. I learned a ton thanks to having highly competent teammates in engineering and having the resources available to experiment. Of course, this problem-solving resulted in a ton of improvements for certain business processes in efficiency, teammate satisfaction, and labor costs. - Lasting product culture, a remnant of the prior generation of leadership. The prior generation of tech's most senior leadership had an extremely strong focus on product-focused development paradigms. The remaining IC's, product and design teammates sort of split the difference between that very specific paradigm and their personal judgment, and came up with a flow that made sense after the hype was over. This resulted in cross-disciplinary teams whose members are fiercely sought out by DSG's competitors for their domain problem-solving skills rather than any particular domain knowledge. This culture still persists in product teams headed by people from this time. - Pretty darned good benefits. Very good healthcare, solid PTO, a recently improved paternity/maternity leave policy, a good number of holidays, etc. Absolutely no complaints- many teammates start and raise their families working for DSG. - Fascinating domain problems to solve. Especially in Store Tech, you can do store visits in your region of residence to help out your design and product teammates, and learn more about how those disciplines work. I still miss this part of the job tbh. - Absolutely stellar work-life balance. I can count on one hand the number of times I was asked to work any off-hours outside of an on-call shift, and the on-call is pretty manageable now that we've shaken out a lot of legacy baggage. - Overall a great learning opportunity. If you're an entry to mid level dev and want to learn how to develop in your particular team's stack, DSG teaches you incredibly valuable product and engineering skills because of the quality of senior/principal teammates.
Cons
- The Store Tech org's product-focused culture slowly got weaker over time. Business needs are important, but there were a number of examples where we wanted to get data to better solve domain issues and were roughly told "no, because I said so", or got stuck working on a vanity project for a VP. This is demoralizing to teammates who are there to solve problems rather than collect a paycheck (because realistically, engineers can collect great paychecks at lots of places). - Strong focus on pair-programming can mean that there are times when you might just feel like you're watching someone code. From where I stand now, I can honestly say that's what it actually was sometimes, especially when skill/experience levels were slanted between partners. The pair programming requirement is sort of a carry-over from the Extreme paradigm, and does tend to result in very high-quality code amongst the DSG tech teams that use it. However, if you're looking for more flexible schedules or are working from an area with poor bandwidth, it can make things tough for your situation. - Poor recognition of high performers due to DSG treating tech like a business org rather than a separate entity. The tech organization's ability to keep up with the market in terms of comp is hampered by top leadership. I got a lot of marketable skills during a series of high-business-priority initiatives I took part in. Even with my manager and director fighting very hard to get high performers recognized, I found that my skills were much better compensated elsewhere by similar companies. This isn't exclusive to DSG, it's an issue across enterprise orgs where leadership doesn't want to rock the boat by asking for more funding, and instead blame it on a "labor shortage". - The product and design orgs need leadership that actually respect the meritocratic contributions of its contributors (including female veterans of the industry we were lucky to have). When I was there, it seemed to be headed by leadership that was kept there due to not rocking the boat with the business. Some of the best design experts were given titles that probably came with great salary bumps, but which also didn't give them the merited responsibility of determining policy. DSG needs those people in decision-making roles not out of entitlement, but because of their demonstrable capabilities.