Zoom

The benefits that Zoom provides are outstanding for the industry. That, coupled with the prestige of "working for Zoom," is about where the pros stop, though.

Archaic engineering practices. Product Owners / Project Managers are just figureheads and have no clout to drive product decisions. Engineering seems to make all the decisions and just kind of does what it wants to.

Tickets have no details and are defined as work is being done. Deadlines are artificial and almost impossible to ever hit because of the lack of detail.

QA is done by the engineers, which greatly reduces output in an already chaotic environment. Hardly anything is automated, so it's a huge time sink.

Non-US teams never compromise and meet during US hours for anything. US employees always have to spend late nights in meetings.

Upper management seems completely divorced from what is actually going on in engineering. Multiple surveys have been sent out about how to improve, but key pain points are never addressed.

Basic things here....

Don't use your highest-paid employees to do manual testing.

Push for automation. Yes, we won't be able to push out the next half-baked feature to users, but at least we won't be wasting time testing every release.

Encourage time to actually plan sprints/features. So much time is wasted working and reworking things due to lack of planning. Our efficiency numbers are horrible.

Be involved in decisions and direction. Make a comprehensive plan and stop reacting.

Listen to your employees. Try to actually address issues.

Let product management actually manage the product.

Slow down to actually plan. Stop with this ridiculous mantra of "fast."

Fix career advancement. This business of "well, you do the job for six months, then we might give you the title" isn't going to work, especially when the environment is already chaotic and overly stressful. Nobody is going to take on extra work for free just to maybe get a title bump.