Asana

Smart engineers from all over the industry.

Strong learning and sharing culture. Lots of knowledge willing to be shared if you ask. Jerk ICs get weeded out quickly.

Engineering tooling is mature. High engineering standards. Strong ownership (AoR) culture. Good work-life balance.

Shares are at an all-time low, so I guess joining now has high upside if you believe in the company.

Asana went from being an industry leader to being an industry follower.

Comp & benefits are stuck in the 2010s. Career opportunities are scarce, with external hires seemingly preferred. There has been high eng IC turnover recently.

A cringey, bland corpo culture has taken over. Decisions are made at a glacial pace, often perplexing, and announced with Ballmer-esque flair.

The company grew too fast during COVID, went through layoffs, and is now repeating the same mistake. Senior management is afraid of accountability and full of excuses for why the company is trending downward. Competitors have mostly recovered and are outpacing us, so stop blaming COVID or economic headwinds and own up. Upmarket Work Graph and AI can't be the entire strategy while competitors outmaneuver us.

A bloated management structure has many ineffective middle managers. There are a few toxic or completely useless eng-adjacent departments where cronyism has completely taken over.

Trim the fat. You have years of engagement survey and G&I results. You know which departments and leaders are chronically bad. Raise the comp & benefits target and promote internally more often to retain high-performing employees.

Quality over quantity.

Bring some personality back to the company (openly allowing personal desk or pod decor again would be a good start). Get rid of the cringe corporate-Memphis pastel-vomit decor and standardized presentations.

Take accountability. Be willing to say that you messed up with past decisions and explain how you intend to fix them moving forward.