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Preserve the magic, work elsewhere

Software Engineer
Current Employee
Has worked at Disney for 4 years
July 16, 2020
Seattle, Washington
2.0
Doesn't RecommendNegative OutlookNo CEO Opinion
Pros

It's Disney. Free park access, decent benefits, good people.

Cons

There's a lot to go through here. There is a lot of political red tape that happens all around you. I found myself running into massive walls left and right when trying to address problems with the way things were being done.

The phrase "That's not the Disney way" is thrown around a lot. Sure, Disney has been around and what they've been doing seems to work, but they're not innovating or moving. They're stagnant, and that's not good.

They like to silo people to the point I had no idea what my other teammates were doing because they don't encourage communication, and they sure as heck don't care much about team morale.

They've got several legal and technological departments, a moving set of standards that are essentially a la carte. Don't like a policy put out by infosec? That's fine! Just ignore it!

Bring up an issue to have it addressed by leadership? Your immediate leaders will listen (which is good!). Once you're past director level, they are so removed from everything that they don't care as long as they get their bonuses. This means at any point in time, millions are being wasted on aging technology that needs to be updated but won't be because of "reasons".

That brings us full circle to some of the other issues. The way Disney has handled this pandemic was bad, at best. People are/were on indefinite furloughs, and teams are being ground to dust because executive leadership hasn't ever worked with a team that does thing X, so they don't know what to do with them. Instead of learning, they do the Microsoft thing of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

There aren't many opportunities that bubble up from within, at least not up north. Down in California, sure.

Advice to Management

Stop copy and pasting responses. Actually read what your employees are telling you and do something about it.

Executives, reconnect with your humanity and start treating those underneath like they are worth something instead of something you stepped in.

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