Wikimedia Foundation

Awesome goal Very well known product Non-profit with a tech side Good life/work balance Open source, and community focused Ok salary Remote

Surprisingly, in the tech department, collaboration is extremely hard and painful, to the point of being avoided.

Due to the lack of collaboration, all work is individualized: you do your work, don't touch anybody's.

The same lack of collaboration, and a layered org/responsibilities, make any work that requires more than a layer extremely painful.

That means that any meaningful work is either not done, or slow and painful, so there's an increasing pile of tech debt that nobody wants to tackle (and is encouraged not to).

The focus on individual and hand-over-the-fence type of work also ends up with little project management knowledge in the org; one-person projects don't need it.

This also creates a very damaging "us vs them" culture.

Little learning opportunities. Limited progression opportunities.

So, if you only want to do small things by yourself, it's a great place to be. If you want to do anything else, you will probably not last much.

The org is growing and has to learn that collaboration is required to be able to scale (a bit ironic that Wikimedia needs this reminder).

Enable people and promote tackling the core issues; they will not get easier with time. Enforce a less hierarchical structure and cross-functional groups.

It is very welcome that managers have a technical background, but make sure that they are managers and leave technical decisions to the engineers.