Unity

The best colleagues I've had in my career so far. The culture and atmosphere makes my colleagues easily the best part of the job. A diverse and brilliant set of people, working on a shared mission in a multitude of ways.

The work itself, the challenges and the mission are fun, appealing, and motivating.

The flexibility afforded to work when and where possible is great and allows for near the easiest balancing I've had in my career. Though it remains a bit unclear if this will stay this way as return to office continues to roll out, I remain hopeful on this topic.

In recent years, R&D management has been taken over by a predominantly US and UK style, top-down, command & control style of leadership. People are leveled, and their careers stunted, as if the main objective were to keep costs down and employees hungry for more and dependent on management.

The company is now three years into the rollout of a new leveling system that has miss-leveled people left and right, with no possibility for mitigation (save for role and team changes). Management can't admit mistakes that were made, nor take steps (like skip-level promotions) to fix these, claiming they don't want to set a precedent. This is not just me being grumpy, nor an isolated occurrence. This is happening to several ICs, and only the leadership chain above those affected can't admit it. The miss-leveling and injustices in leveling are acknowledged by fellow team members, other ICs, as well as by current and former leads who are outside the reporting structure of the affected but know them and the work they do.

The claim is that the leveling system (essentially the same as Microsoft's) is still too new and that kinks are still being ironed out, but that it is, save for very minor imbalances, fair and correct. But if several people with over 5-8 YOE at the time are leveled the same as a Student Worker turning FTE, I don't see that as a minor imbalance.

Your experience may differ, depending on how focused you are on your career. If you are working on one of the more highly visible products (read: flashy), are good at self-promoting, continuously keep your lead honest to their claims of career growth, or manage to switch teams every odd year or so, you might do fine.

Otherwise, this company can easily become a death trap for your career, including plunging it into reverse.

Meanwhile, constant reorganizations create countless career opportunities for middle management, to the point where that seems to be the only rhyme or reason for them.

Top management meanwhile thinks they can push decisions down the hierarchy instead of listening and letting ideas bubble up. The only thing keeping them from fully succeeding is the excellent culture of speaking up. Every time this happens, though, the claims that they listen and understand become more hollow.

Learn how successful product companies actually work by dropping the archaic dichotomy of "Management = Great Visionaries and Thinkers" and "ICs = Mindless Automatons".

Stop low-balling people. Stop stunting careers. Fix the leveling and allow for corrections. Treat ICs like responsible adults.

Actually listen to the people doing the work, instead of "listening" in the hopes to hear praise for your plans. Consider not making the plans yourself and instead facilitating the plan bubbling up by further strengthening the Product roles. The latter seems to be the current direction, but will fail if it lacks the buy-in from SVPs as much as it seems to.