Checkout.com

Not much apart from a good kind CEO.

Being a developer at Checkout.com was one of the biggest disappointments and a disrespectful job for the software engineering profession.

It has been an exhaustive and misleading job! As a software engineer, you need to be a Business Analyst, Product Analyst, QA, and Scrum Master, running scrum ceremonies, which was never part of any software engineer job description they had.

Specifically, they wanted software engineers to do jobs like requirement gathering, write user stories, and run scrum ceremonies. In case you wonder, yes, you read correctly; everything needs to be done by developers.

Developers need to code, code review, prepare for running scrum ceremonies like refinement meetings, prepare user stories, run retrospectives, run stand-ups, do testing, and write Confluence documentation.

What made a really bad impression is the fact that you could be told off on top of that because, for example, you didn't run the refinement meeting as well as a Business Analyst would run it.

It sometimes made me wonder why any of the above is a developer's work anyway, and what the current analysts are actually doing.

That is due to the fact the company started as a small startup, and the current managers and team leads are inexperienced, uneducated, and have big egos, and do not have the mindset of big software companies. They should at least listen if they want to grow.

You cannot outwork software engineers like that because you lose valuable talent. There should be a fine line between Software Developers, Analysts, Product Owners, and QAs.

Bottom line: Bad management, inexperienced team leaders, big egos from fish in a small pond who suddenly became big.

You are losing valuable talent.

Review very well how the team leads are treating developers.

Developers are not business analysts, nor do they need to write user stories or run scrum ceremonies like refinement meetings, stand-ups, or retrospectives.

Developers should never be told off because they are not running a retrospective as well as a scrum master. This is a separate profession.

Educate your current management as the company grows. They need to know each role description separately. You cannot grow if your current team leads don't know what they are doing.