I put my trust into this company as an employee. Unfortunately, I feel they betrayed my confidence and expectations as a colleague, team member, and professional.
Lack of respect for seniority. Inexperienced leadership.
Tight-knit team, but cultural issues hampered teamwork efforts and stymied open communication. When I was supposed to be learning the codebase, current team members, rather than help me understand the codebase, went off their own to refactor and didn't document or explain changes before or afterward. Zero communication.
It appears they interpreted me not performing as well as they expected to be not a fault of their own, but a shortcoming of my personal technical ability and skill. This shows me they don't understand how onboarding works.
Requests for discussions on how health record systems and integrations worked were treated as if they were handholding, even in the phase I was onboarding. Having no background in EHR, how did they expect me to learn it?
They appeared to think their own habits and opinions were obvious. Unfortunately, at times, they were far from mainstream. I was chastised for merely asking. Apparently, to them, being senior entails learning solely from inference, even when all the newcomer has to go on is observing unexplained, whimsical personal niches. This is mistaken, and not how technical jobs or teams work.
In one case, I was berated in an email for merely correcting a simple thing - on the level of fixing a typo. They were that sensitive.
Unstable work environment for employees. I've never heard of a senior level tech person being thrown overboard at-will, because they could use performance reviews to fire with cause. Or, they would ask them to resign. At least give the person dignity, if you're ending the employment without just cause.
Despite our conversations giving me time to learn and talk about patience in conversations, they terminate without giving warning or establishing just cause, citing at-will employment.
This indicates to me lack of understanding of tech culture norms and disregard to professional respect.
Despite their firing on a whim, they fail to provide support for career recovery needs. They didn't care about me, for the repercussions their termination had on me financially or professionally.
I never really figured out what their end game was. They weren't open communicators. I really tried. I wanted to make it work.
Cultural issues, I'm not going into here. Self-awareness shortcomings.
I don't think the leadership understands startup culture. I don't think they understand tech.
My judgment is they're disorganized. My impression is leadership comes from blue collar managerial and bureaucratic tracks, and aren't familiar with the trust and affability that startups espouse. This explains why they were so tone depth and lacked the basic empathy to even onboard me correctly.