Meta

Good benefits, even distribution of stock options, top-of-the-line pay. As an engineer, a lot of power with not very much ops interference. Smart people.

Where do I start? Toxic culture, absolutely no upper management organization, or an idea of what they want their product to accomplish. They told the engineering team to “spend at all costs of making the technology work” and then turned around and fired everyone when it got too expensive. Very sexist and extremely conservative culture. Very disorganized, with programs that are allowed to run free in the worst of ways. Many people willing to throw others under the bus to save their own skin. Very unclear what the goals of the reality org are, and they keep their employees in the dark about what they want. Management doesn’t prioritize hiring good managers.

The TLM position is setting managers up for failure. Focus more on people-based management, separate from being a technical lead.

Smoke out the sexist/racist individuals that are in management.

Get a dedicated ops and quality team. Put an honest effort into focusing on mass production goals, not “engineering for engineering’s sake.”

Stop building to build. Having 3-4 builds in a row with no testing is a waste of time and money. Cancel a build if you can’t test it.

More Product Management interference with engineering. Features should be driven by customer demand.

There is no need to have 3-4 levels of directors reporting in to each other and only managing other directors.

If the direction of the company changes, remember the history of direction prior to that. If you say you want a program built “at any cost,” don’t be surprised when the program is way over budget.