I was told I needed to "communicate more," which apparently meant bugging key decision makers over and over while they ignored me. Meanwhile, multiple peers communicated that they did not want to bother these key decision makers because they were always busy with urgent, important work. Spoiler: there was never a time they weren't.
The same person who was incredibly helpful early was, unfortunately, also verbally abusive and constantly talked down about nearly every peer. People I carpooled with to company events talked down about our peers, creating a clique vibe that management encouraged through obvious favoritism. It made things very uncomfortable.
I was called out in group meetings for delays on tasks that were held up by slow responses, among other things, by the same person calling me out. I was criticized and made an example of for not setting up stories correctly while others made the same/similar mistakes and just laughed it off. Lead by example? Apparently not.
I was given a laptop that couldn't handle my workload, which I brought up multiple times. The only solution offered was to buy my own equipment. One of my peers purchased and provided necessary testing environments because management refused to provide it. This is not appropriate for an employer/employee relationship. When I returned the laptop, I wasn't paid back for shipping even after asking politely.
We would also be hinted at that we should use AI by management, yet management did not supply the means unless you count using Copilot in the browser, which really isn't an effective use case for developers. Others would express distaste for AI use. This is just another example of mixed communication and management's refusal to fund the things we needed.
We held regular retros where issues, often workload or money-related, were raised again and again. Nothing ever changed. Complete waste of time.
