Pros
- Competitive salaries and good compensation packages. - Willingness to hire and give opportunities to developers. - Many engineers are motivated and eager to learn. - Exposure to fintech domain and large-scale delivery pressure.
Cons
- Executive leadership lacks the structure and experience required to scale an engineering organization. Several C-level roles appeared to be filled without the necessary background or qualifications for operating at that level, which negatively impacted decision-making, prioritization, and long-term strategy. - Excessive executive micromanagement and trust issues. C-level was asking to join engineering standups, sprint planning sessions, and retrospectives, creating pressure, limiting open discussion, and undermining team autonomy. - HR leadership was ineffective. HR processes lacked professionalism, transparency, and consistency. Concerns raised by employees were not handled constructively. - Unclear ownership and lack of technical direction. There was no strong software architecture leadership, resulting in tightly coupled systems, accumulating technical debt, and limited focus on scalability or maintainability. - Politics, and knowledge hoarding. Teams across different regions (Egypt and Pakistan) often worked in isolation. Internal politics were common, with individuals and teams competing for visibility and responsibility while withholding knowledge out of fear for job security. - DevOps isolated from development teams. DevOps ownership was centralized in a separate offshore team, leading to communication gaps, slow feedback cycles, and a lack of shared responsibility for reliability and delivery. - Toxic behavior tolerated. Certain individuals were widely known internally for unprofessional or toxic behavior, yet this was rarely addressed, impacting morale and collaboration. - Unrealistic delivery expectations. Business stakeholders were disconnected from engineering realities, leading to timelines that prioritized delivery speed over quality, scalability, and sustainability. - Unprofessional communication from leadership. At times, communication from senior leadership toward developers was aggressive and inappropriate, contributing to a culture of fear rather than trust and accountability.