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Dysfunctional engineering org turning worse every day.

Senior Software Engineer
Current Employee
Has worked at DigitalOcean for 2 years
November 30, 2017
2.0
Doesn't RecommendNeutral OutlookDoesn't Approve of CEO
Pros
  • The people team seems to be legitimately caring and trying to make a difference.

  • Remote culture

  • Good perks and decent salary for people outside NY

Cons

-The engineering reorg was done in an awful way. Now each pillar (or better-said silo) establishes their own practices for pretty much everything. This leads to a lot of inconsistencies and mistrust. Because pillars don't currently talk, good luck trying to collaborate with other teams.

  • The level of the new hires is much lower than what it used to be. Now that each pillar controls their own hiring process, the mismatch between new hires in each pillar is huge.

  • Waterfall development everywhere, with no regards to any sort of technical discipline or standards. People do "sprints" and are "agile", but in reality, everything is done using Gantt-charts. And, of course like any other waterfall project, everything changes the last minute and people scramble to pull some heroics to duct-tape whatever may work.

  • Hero culture where a few individuals try to overcome all the structural problems by sheer bravery. These acts are even celebrated during the recognition part of the AMAs. This aggravates the culture of self-promotion that is the only way one can grow in this company.

Advice to Management

Be clear about what is going to be done to improve the leadership issues that are reported in every survey or the trust will erode completely.

Also, please acknowledge that there are leaders everywhere in the company. When people point out leadership issues, it may be more pervasive as it seems. Invest in training and level setting management practices and expectations for your middle managers too. We all know that most people leave managers, not companies.

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