Pros
We have kind, smart people that are doing their best. We hire and support women. It's a tech industry job, fairly simple work, and reasonable compensation. Unlimited PTO.
Sales revenue isn't declining.
Cons
Low Morale
Publicly, morale appears positive. In private, you hear a very different story. An on-site became a “virtual on-site,” which ultimately became a glorified all-hands. Revenue growth is stagnant. Leadership turnover has been frequent enough to raise a real question: are we struggling to hire effectively, or is something else fundamentally wrong?
No Leadership
The Product Managers are gone after sustained micromanagement and a bi-directional breakdown in trust. The Engineering team does not believe in the current product vision. The roadmap changes substantially quarter to quarter, preventing meaningful traction. After product leadership became centralized with the CEO, the roadmap increasingly resembles sales and marketing wishcasting instead of a strategy grounded in tradeoffs or execution discipline.
No Accountability
There is no accountability across design, product, and engineering. In one example, a team worked for nine months to deliver work estimated at six weeks. There was no meaningful review of what went wrong, and no changes followed. This is not a one-off; it is a predictable pattern. The organization routinely fails to ship valuable features on time, while responsibility is deflected rather than owned. The truth is our most significant challenges are self-inflicted.
Overall, people shift from building a product to protecting themselves. When Engineering Leadership acknowledged a culture of mediocrity the response was not correction, but reinforcement. Grinding code is normalized. Responsibility is optional. Side-quests are encouraged at the expense of team outcomes.