Samsung

Good work-life balance, group RRSP matching, group insurance with good coverage.

Since late 2020, everything has started to degenerate.

The once efficient communication has been replaced by clumsy Scrum methodologies, where your daily activity is now watched by your manager, by the Scrum master, and by the product manager.

The engineering managers with great technical skills have now been replaced by non-contributing ones. Nowadays, engineering managers are basically secretaries. They schedule meetings but make no technical contribution. Some of them ask engineers to write down their daily activities to better monitor them, which is ridiculous.

Product managers now have more power of speech to drive technical direction. They appear everywhere, asking engineers to do non-technical tasks, like reviewing Excel spreadsheets. Even if you write code to accomplish some tasks, you find nothing to add to your CV after 1-2 years.

Salary growth is not competitive. If you start from 80k a year, you may still earn less than 100k after 3-4 years of contribution. Meanwhile, they are now hiring people working remotely in Canada for the San Francisco office but earning an SF salary.

Turnover in the recent 12 months is extremely high. Old team leads and the entire old backend team have left the company.

Management and HR live in their own world. They don't understand and refuse to understand what real life is. If you just need a job with an OK-ish salary but not long-term career development, then fine. Otherwise, avoid them or find a way out as early as possible.

I'm not paid to give you advice.