Coupang

Excellent benefits and working environment, with some great coworkers (most, not all).

Management is feeling the pressure from last year's IPO and the freefall in valuation since then. Unfortunately, they seem to pass this pressure directly down to engineers, sucking the joy out of working on cool problems and replacing it with pressure to deliver features to the user and revenue improvements to the stockholder.

The company cannot retain senior-level talent and up and seems desperate to hire level 5+ to the point of making questionable hiring decisions.

However, the most important downside is that once new engineers are brought on, there is nothing in the way of onboarding to meet coworkers, build rapport, and get new hires up to speed with company systems, practices, and codebase. There is also no communication from management about expectations in your new role.

My manager, in particular, did not seem to know what knowledge is needed for onboarding, details of the codebase, or even important administrative procedures. He makes employees suffer because he does not deliver performance assessments so that they can be acted upon.

New hires are expected to "feel it out in the dark" and get themselves running, and fast, because the company needs results. This is not helped by the mostly remote work arrangement in which many of the engineers you need to talk to (who you have never met!) are working while you are sleeping and vice versa. Nor is it helped by a few personalities (not many, but enough) who would rather feel pride in their status than try to help you out.

Steer clear of this company if you have any other choice.

Have a little humanity and talk to your direct reports!

About how you will assess their performance, about what is in their way, and also about something other than work every now and then!

If you want honesty from engineers, there needs to be honesty from management, not hiding from difficult conversations.