Engineering standards are poor, and the leadership don't seem to have much background in high quality engineering. They say they're a tech company, but not really. A good product company hacking around to get features out. Still behaving like an early stage startup, not like a tech company in 2025. Feature factory stuff.
Processes are poor. No alignment on DevOps practices, things like observability are given little thought, or at least receive no priority from leadership. Lack of strategic planning, and no real consideration for architectural thinking. Some engineers and managers seem to want to improve this but they're squashed by short term thinking and hype.
It's a bit cult like. You have to love the hype and join it, or you'll just be seen as a downer. You'll be happier if you just accept the bad practice and cheer along, because trying to improve things is just too frustrating. You'll be more celebrated this way too. Privately people will discuss everything that's not going well, but publicly it's best to fall in line with the hype train. A lot of it feels very fake.
The senior leadership in tech lack hands on skills, but want to tell you how it's done...
Lip service around "what makes us a great employer". Seen it with a couple of things - saying all the right things publicly, but then unwilling to back it up when it affects your staff.
