Fanatics

There are good opportunities to work with AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT, but there is no time or scope for actual personal technical upskilling. Ultimately, this comes at the direct cost of sacrificing your personal life, getting crushed by inefficient higher management, and dealing with weird, frustrating HR policies.

Compensation offers are padded with fancy but useless RSUs. Unless the company goes public, they are worthless, which won't happen in the next five years because an IPO isn't even their actual goal.

Recent policy changes have severely restricted our work-life balance. While our old "unlimited" PTO always required manager approval, it at least gave us some flexibility. Now, they've forced a return to the office and introduced bizarre new HR leave rules. Stripping away flexibility is absurd when we have cross-timezone teams and expected late-night work in this high-workload, aggressive startup culture.

Tech higher management is a joke. They push vague ideas with one philosophy: "build fast with AI." Instead of building properly, they rush terrible work out the door, leaving developers to spend their sprints fixing bugs.

To top it off, management weaponises "industry standards." Every ridiculous policy cutting our perks is justified as an industry standard, yet they develop sudden memory loss about industry standards when giving fair salary hikes.

Ensure salary hikes align with the same industry standards used to justify policy changes. Be transparent with candidates about the realistic timeline for an IPO and the actual value of RSUs in compensation packages. Balance the push for rapid AI development with proper engineering standards to reduce technical debt. Finally, restore the flexibility needed to support cross-timezone and late-night work if you want to retain capable talent.