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Arcade, Bad Managers, No Privacy

Senior Software Engineer
Former Employee
Worked at Credit Karma for 2 years
June 20, 2017
San Francisco, California
2.0
Neutral OutlookNo CEO Opinion
Pros
  • Arcade
  • Drinking
  • There are a handful of cool people.
Cons

The self-reviews are soul-smushing. Maybe I'm just sensitive, but having to rate myself 1-5 on 5 traits and write an essay about why I deserve a promotion, even if your manager has already decided to not put you up to the hiring committee, just feels farcical and dehumanizing.

I think management is awful at assessing who's a good engineer and who's not.

I had a string of bad managers (or managers who were forced to be bad due to requirements placed on them, unclear). I had about 5 managers in less than 2 years, most of whom were focused on "getting out the door faster."

I worked in a vertical that made no money, so regardless of how good my code was, I wasn't seen as on a "star team" because the product side couldn't make it work.

Obsession with Google/Twitter is true.

The CTO admitted to reading private slacks. Engineers in general would be careful what they'd say on slack because they were concerned about privacy, which I think had a real "chilling effect" on the ability to acknowledge management problems.

I once had a manager rewrite my API calling code into 15 classes + 15 interfaces "for reusability" (introducing bugs in the process). The code was never reused because the vertical was basically shut down, but he was "from Google," so I guess I'm wrong....

When I left, I got more than 30k more. They didn't even try to match my offer. I understand why; I called it like I saw it, and that style really didn't fit in there.

Advice to Management

I don't know where to begin.

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