Okta

• Amazing engineers with a lot of heart, sense of humor, and talent.
• A promising IPO on the horizon.
• Product meets a strong business need and is well respected by customers.

In a time when every Silicon Valley company values their engineering talent, Okta management still lives in this dystopian world where they are fine treating them like replaceable commodities.

There is no real process to assess performance. If a bunch of people leave, management gets insecure and promotes a bunch of people. If people don't leave, management plays delay tactics and creates fake promotion promises to frustrate the engineers to leave. Rinse and repeat every year.

Inconsistent, reactionary, and fear-driven management culture creates this weird atmosphere where an outage results in management running around like headless chickens, looking to place blame on anyone down the ladder.

Product Management arm-twists Engineering management to bow to their will. Result? Engineers get burnt out trying to meet deliverables and eventually leave.

The business is going well. Great. But there is something systemically broken in engineering. Listen carefully to them, or you will be left with a soul-less corporation which attracts mediocre talent.

Create a consistent review process and adhere to it strictly. Don't let prima donnas bully you into giving them undeserving titles. Don't make promises you can't keep.