Continental reviews

Tasks/projects on which people are working on can be changed suddenly and with no prior warning. Line management tells you what your time allocation between projects is (approximately - no explicit figure ever given - it's always 'around' - but that makes it difficult when different projects leads are imposing requests to adequately negotiate). This is especially true when priorities are not clearly laid out. More importantly, the dependencies of the project have not been thought through. You can start working on a task and ask about components/resources you realise you will need and be told that they are coming (documentation is one good example - no documentation available - or, well, maybe the stubs of documentation - e.g., headers of the documentation but no relevant information but you have to use the component - it turns out that the component itself is still evolving - which is why the documentation is still in its infancy). Tools are changed with no warning, no training, no explanation. The only time you realise that there is a new tool is when you've been put on a mailing list and get updates about it - you may not even know what the point of the tool is, what it's meant to be used for or which teams are using the tool - are you getting notifications because you have been assigned to a task/project or is it because someone has decided that at some point you may need to use the tool or work on that task?). There seems to be some power struggles between management. it is not uncommon for questions that you had thought resolved gets brought up a few weeks later by another manager (they will argue that it's in the context of a different project - but then something has failed if a generic component is not generic enough to be used in more than one project - or if the projects who have dependencies on a specific components have not coordinated to make sure that work does not have to be done 3, 4, 5, or more times). My recent favorite was a discussion where an engineer was told to go ahead making certain assumptions as there was a meeting the following day to sort out most of the questions. Is there really not enough work that the task cannot be put on hold for 24-48 hours while the uncertainties are resolved to avoid going up the wrong path or doubling work? Or is this a recognition that for all the talk nothing is going to be resolved? Or is this a preemptive strike to force other stakeholders to be committed to one vision of how a component is to be designed/implemented? In any case, the word I can say is 'chaos'....absolute and utter chaos. Standups are regularly moved around to suit the schedules of the scrum masters (or deputy scrum masters) rather than sticking with the concept of standups being fixed to help develop the communication pattern that is needed. And, post-fact e-mails to justify that agreement had been obtained from the team members even though at least some team members were not consulted.

A brutal and unforgiving working culture which strays sometimes to the wrong side of abusive. The management team is preoccupied with internicene warfare and poisonous personality conflicts. Stand-up shouting matches in the corridors are not unheard of. Some outright bullying and intimidation has occurred also. The management team is very inexperienced and chaotic. The workplace exists in a state of permanent crunch-time where employees are expected to work (unpaid) overtime or to travel abroad with little to no notice to compensate for the lack of planning and weak leadership. The most experienced and talented team members are belittled, sidelined and ignored. Understaffing, impossible deadlines, pure-fiction fantasy requirements, inexperienced, underpaid and demotivated colleagues in "best cost" locations have created a "perfect storm" of quality and maintainability issues. Technical debt is out of this world, and an epic blame game has ensued. The occasional (bogus) threat that individual developers will be held legally liable for bugs does not help. Overall, it is a terrifying and exhausting place to work. Expect it to damage your relationships, your sanity and your physical health.