JPMorgan Chase

Big company, in theory, room for growth and many different teams to potentially explore. I know employees in other areas of the company who had good experiences.

I'm not sure what was specific to my team, but I had horrible experiences with a toxic manager and HR who supported her and didn't adequately back me up. This was even though she illegally counted my sick days, PTO, and family leave against me. Everything was legitimate on my side.

She undermined me and honestly had it out for me once the team's leader wanted to promote me to start leading some dev projects, which infringed on her territory. At one point, she specifically blocked me from attending in-company events or group meetings for female engineers and career advancement.

Once she brought up I wasn't completing as many story points as the male engineers (I was the only female) for a project, I did an analysis. I discovered I had done just as much as them but had a tendency to award myself less points for equivalent work. I pointed this out to her, and she still tried to get me with a PIP.

Many people from my team left, and there was constant internal complaining about management, etc. Several talented employees were totally disrespected.

I am absolutely just as, if not more, intelligent than most of the team I was on, and I have a track record to prove it. This experience made me decide to leave the career path for 3 years.

I'm amazed my manager is still with the company. I started off completely supportive of her and singing her praises as a fellow female engineer who truly thought she had as much grit and brains as anyone and knew what it took.

Unfortunately, she didn't have integrity or common sense/decency regarding people who deal with real life (she was young; I had to support a sick family member) in some key areas, and that's just BS.

I may have been open to trying again on another team far away from my previous one, but I chose to leave the company instead for better opportunities.

Don't step on your employees, and don't lead with ego. Listen and respect. Psychological safety matters. You have so much sway to empower people or tear them down – empower them.