Great People Culture, Terrible Career Chaos
Pros
The best colleagues I've had in my career so far. The culture and atmosphere makes my colleagues easily the best part of the job. A diverse and brilliant set of people, working on a shared mission in a multitude of ways. The work itself, the challenges and the mission is fun, appealing and motivating. The flexibility afforded to work when and where possible is great and allows for near the easiest balancing I've had in my career. Though it remains a bit unclear if this will stay this way as return to office continues to roll out, I remain hopeful on this topic.
Cons
In the recent years, R&D management has been taken over by a predominantly US and UK style, top-down, command & control style of leadership. People are leveled and their careers stunted as if the main objective would be to keep cost down and employees hungry for more and dependent on management. The company is now 3 years into the roll-out of a new leveling system, that miss-leveled people left and right with no possibility for mitigation (safe for role and team changes). Management can't admit mistakes that were made, nor take steps (skip level promotions) to fix these, claiming not to want to set precedence. This is not just me being grumpy, nor an isolated occurrence. This is happening to several ICs and only the leadership chain above those affected can't admit it. The miss-leveling and injustices in leveling is acknowledged by fellow team members, other ICs as well as by current and former leads that are outside the reporting structure of the affected, but know them and the work they do. The claim is that the leveling system (essentially the same as Mircosoft's) is still too new and that kinks are still being ironed out, but that it is, safe for very minor in-balances, fair and correct. But if several people with over 5-8 YOE at the time are leveled the same as a Student Worker turning FTE, I don't see that as a minor in-balance. Your experience may differ, depending on how focused you are on your career. If you are working on one of the more highly visible products (read flashy), are good at self-promoting, continuously keep your lead honest to their claims of career growth, or manage to switch teams every odd year or so, you might do fine. Otherwise, this company can easily become a death-trap for your career, including plunging it into reverse. Meanwhile, constant reorgs create countless career opportunities for middle management, to the point where that seems to be the only rhyme or reason for them. Top management meanwhile thinks they can push decisions down the hierarchy instead of listening and letting ideas bubble up. The only thing keeping them from fully succeeding is the excellent culture of speaking up. Every time this happens though, the claims that they listen and understand becomes more hollow.
